Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Time Slot
Browse By Person
Browse By Room
Browse By Division
Browse By Session Type
Search Tips
Conference Home Page
Visiting Baltimore
Personal Schedule
Sign In
Session Submission Type: Panel Session
The Jewish community of Amsterdam was constituted at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Portuguese and Spanish former-conversos returning to Judaism. The founding of a yesiba for advanced rabbinic education in such a community was a bold if not incongruous decision. Having learned something of the origins of Ets Haim in our first session, this panel is dedicated to the way that training and life in the yesiba related to issues in the larger community it served. We begin with a continuation of the discussion of the yesiba’s curriculum, focusing on the study of Latin and “non-Jewish” subjects. This was material that was seldom if ever taught within other yeshivot before the end of the nineteenth century but was important to the Amsterdam Sephardim. We then investigate the nature of the rabbinate itself in seventeenth century Amsterdam to consider what it meant to be trained, ordained, or employed as a rabbi in that milieu. Finally, we focus on a controversy that occurred in the yesiba when the brilliant but rigid North African scholar, Hakham Jacob Sasportas, encountered attitudes among the former-converso students which he considered inappropriate to the respect of teachers. The overall concept of these papers is to see the close and complex relationship between the yesiba, its rabbis, and the Amsterdam community during its first century.
Beyond the Rabbinic Curriculum: Secular Education in Jewish Amsterdam” - Aaron L. Katchen, Brandeis University
Who was a Hakham? The Differentiation of Scholarly Status in the Talmud Tora Community of Amsterdam - Anne Albert, Katz Center, University of Pennsylvania
Rabbi Jacob Sasportas and the Ets Haim Yesiba - Yaacob Dweck, Princeton University