Poverty and Welfare Among the Portuguese Jews of Early Modern Amsterdam

Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, an independent scholar and former curator of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, writes through the lens of Ashkenazic Dutch and Sephardic Portugese history in that city. However, the book is actually a social history of poverty and the motives and forces that drive charity. She astutely examines many facets involved: wealth, shame, faith, pride, racial discrimination, public health, the roles of women and men, children and adults, family, migration, and the weight of history. Though the book is exhaustively researched and free from theoretical baggage, Bernfeld keeps a relentlessly scholarly tone. She has accumulated a gold mine of detailed personal data and clearly understands the larger frame of her subject, though the text never evokes the lives of individuals or the story of a city or community. Of the 590-page book, only 230 pages are text. The remainder are appendices, notes, and works cited. Of primary interest to specialty academic and museum scholars. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)