This workshop aims to bring together Portuguese and Dutch experts in Jewish History and Heritage in order to focus on the Sephardic community of Amsterdam through a long-term, transnational and multidisciplinary perspective. Its cornerstone will be the preservation and mediation of the cultural heritage of the Portuguese-Jewish Diaspora and the education for memory as a vehicle to promote the values of citizenship amongst the younger generations. This workshop will approach three major topics:

"Nação Portuguesa": traces and sources for its history

The Sephardic community of Amsterdam and the Holocaust: evoking a troublesome memory

Educating for the remembrance: which strategies to apply in schools and museums?

In February of 2015, the Portuguese government approved the Decree-Law no. 30-A / 2015, which permitted the granting of Portuguese nationality to those whose ancestry dates back to the Jews who were expelled from Portugal in the late fifteenth century or forced to convert to Catholicism, a situation perpetuated by the establishment of the Inquisition and the statutes of blood cleansing. According to the decree, «despite the expulsion and the persecution of their ancestral territory, they have kept, along with their descendants, not only the Portuguese language, in some cases, but also the traditional rites of the ancient Jewish worship in Portugal, saving their surnames over generations, objects and documents proving their Portuguese origin, along with a strong memorial connection to Portugal. Consequently, they are often referred to as “Portuguese Jews” or “Jews of the Portuguese Nation”» (Decree-Law no. 30-A / 2015 of February 27). This document put the history of the Jewish presence in Portugal on the political agenda. However, this was not followed by a noticeable development of scientific research in Portugal concerning the Sephardic diaspora and the Portuguese Jewish communities. 

One of the most remarkable Portuguese Jewish communities was settled in Amsterdam and met its golden age in the seventeenth century. Even today, the city exhibits indelible marks of this past. The Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam, also known as the Esnoga, has become one of the city's ex libris and it still symbolizes the influence and dynamism of the Sephardic Jews in the Dutch Golden Age. Ets Haim / Livraria Montezinos, founded in 1616, survived both World Wars. It is the oldest functioning Jewish library in the world, and its collection has been placed on the UNESCO's Memory of the World Register since 2003. Portuguese and Castilian were commonplace languages in the daily life of the community until the eighteenth century, as proven by the documents held in the Ets Haim Library, as well as in the Stadsarchief Amsterdam. All these traces survived the most dramatic period in the history of Jewish Amsterdam. During World War II, following the occupation of the Netherlands by National Socialist Germany, the Sephardic community was nearly annihilated in Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

This workshop aims to bring together Portuguese and Dutch experts in Jewish History and Heritage in order to focus on the Sephardic community of Amsterdam through a long-term, transnational and multidisciplinary perspective. Its cornerstone will be the preservation and mediation of the cultural heritage of the Portuguese-Jewish Diaspora and the education for memory as a vehicle to promote the values of citizenship amongst the younger generations. This workshop will approach three major topics:

"Nação Portuguesa": traces and sources for its history

The Sephardic community of Amsterdam and the Holocaust: evoking a troublesome memory

Educating for the remembrance: which strategies to apply in schools and museums?

Organization Committee

Organization

Collaboration