Port Jew

Last updated July 21, 2024

The Port Jew concept was formulated by Lois Dubin and David Sorkin in the late 1990s as a social type that describes Jews who were involved in the seafaring and maritime economy of Europe, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Helen Fry suggests that they could be considered to have been "the earliest modern Jews."^[1]

Origins

According to Helen Fry, Port Jews often arrived as "refugees from the Inquisition" and the expulsion of Jews from Iberia. They were allowed to settle in port cities as merchants granted permission to trade in ports such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. Fry notes that their connections with the Jewish diaspora and their expertise in maritime trade made them of particular interest to the mercantilist governments of Europe.^[1] Lois Dubin describes Port Jews as Jewish merchants who were "valued for their engagement in the international maritime trade upon which such cities thrived".^[4] Sorkin and others have characterized the socio-cultural profile of these men as marked by a flexibility towards religion and a "reluctant cosmopolitanism that was alien to both traditional and "enlightened" Jewish identities."

Port Jewish families and business in the early modern period

Jewish family tradition and strategy was built upon business and safety.^[5] Jewish families, as in the case with the Jewish merchant Glikl, married off her children both in nearby cities as well as distant cities for the reason of business and safety.^[5] Glikl being a business woman was not uncommon amongst the German Jews. Christian, Italy, and France all differed from Jewish life history in that it was based on ethical will, which included more of a tale of life lessons to be passed on to the children as well as direction on how to proceed after their death.^[5] Glikl in writing her memoir focused on analyzing accounts of her life while simultaneously addressing her children.^[6] Not only was “Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln” a rich source for cultural and social history, but it also had unusual literacy structure and religious resonance.^[6] In Jewish family culture koved was directly in tune with honesty in business which is also connected to your status, oysher un koved.^[5] Glikl prided herself on leaving Hamburg without a bad debt with any Jew or non-Jew. Jewish business failure held huge weight in bringing shame and disgrace to the Jewish name.^[5]

Port Jewish widows in the early modern period

During the early modern period, wives of Port Jew merchants participated in business through their approach of marriage as a business partnership.^[7] Cheryl Tallan explains how earlier recordings of Jewish women partaking in their husbands’ business dealings can be witnessed in the case recorded by Rabbi Samson in 1216.^[7] During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, women such as Glickl of Hameln, as read in the “Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln”, (including both her mother and grandmother) participated in their husbands’ business dealings as Port Jews in Hamburg.^[6] As was common with many Jewish couples during this period, women had the opportunity to continue their family business after their husbands were deceased.^[6] As a widow, they received a dowry from their husband's estate or descendants upon their husbands’ death.^[7] Through the dowries, Jewish widows were able to continue their husbands’ business dealings and their children’s marriage proposals through the utilization of the business networks established prior to their husbands’ death.^[6]

Expanded to include Ashkenazi merchants

Dubin has proposed that the concept of the "port Jew" be expanded to describe "port Jewry" which she describes as a particular type of Jewish community that existed in European maritime ports and combined maritime commerce with European and Jewish culture. This expanded definition would encompass Ashkenazi as well as Sephardi merchants living in other European ports such as Hamburg, Southampton, Portsmouth, and Odessa.

Sources

Sorkin, David (Spring 1999). "The Port Jew: Notes Toward a Social Type". Journal of Jewish Studies. 50 (1). Cambridge, England: 87–97. doi:10.18647/2168/JJS-1999.
Dubin, Lois. The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999
Cesarani, David ed. Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550–1950. London: Frank Cass, 2002
Cesarani, David and Romain, Gemma eds. Jews and Port Cities, 1590–1990: Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006
Monaco, C. S. “Port Jews or a People of the Diaspora? A Critique of the Port Jew Concept,” In Jewish Social Studies Vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 137–66

Related Research Articles

Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their nation, religion, and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions, and cultures.

A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage, it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate or finance the production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.

The Jewish diaspora or exile is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.

Glückel of Hameln was a German Jewish businesswoman and diarist. Written in her native tongue of Western Yiddish over the course of thirty years, her memoirs were originally intended to be an ethical will for her children and future descendants. Glückel's diaries are the only known pre-modern Yiddish memoirs written by a woman. The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln provide an intimate portrait of German-Jewish life between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and have become an important source for historians, philologists, sociologists, literary critics, and linguists.

Altona, also called Hamburg-Altona, is the westernmost urban borough (Bezirk) of the German city state of Hamburg. Located on the right bank of the Elbe river, Altona had a population of 270,263 in 2016.

In early modern Europe, particularly in Germany, a court Jew or court factor was a Jewish banker who handled the finances of, or lent money to, royalty and nobility. In return for their services, court Jews gained social privileges, including, in some cases, being granted noble status.

Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews are historic terms for the former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Jewish letter carriers were special Jewish postal workers who carried letters to other Jews in Europe. They mainly operated in areas with large Jewish populations.

The history of the Jews in the Netherlands largely dates to the late 16th century and 17th century, when Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain began to settle in Amsterdam and a few other Dutch cities, because the Netherlands was an unusual center of religious tolerance. Since Portuguese Jews had not lived under rabbinic authority for decades, the first generation of those embracing their ancestral religion had to be formally instructed in Jewish belief and practice. This contrasts with Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe, who, although persecuted, lived in organized communities. Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was referred to as the "Dutch Jerusalem" for its importance as a center of Jewish life. In the mid 17th century, Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe migrated. Both groups migrated for reasons of religious liberty, to escape persecution, now able to live openly as Jews in separate organized, autonomous Jewish communities under rabbinic authority. They were also drawn by the economic opportunities in the Netherlands, a major hub in world trade.

The community of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, was of major importance in the seventeenth century. The Portuguese Jews in the Netherlands did not refer to themselves as "Sephardim", but rather as "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation." The Portuguese-speaking community grew from conversos, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal, who rejudaized under rabbinical authority, to create an openly self-identified Portuguese Jewish community. As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews left the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which allowed Jews to become residents. Many Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews. Others had been sincere New Christians, who, despite their conversion, were targeted by Old Christians as suspect. Some of these sought to return to the religion of their ancestors. Ashkenazi Jews began migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, but Portuguese Jews viewed them with ambivalence.

The history of the Jews in Europe spans a period of over two thousand years. Jews, an Israelite tribe from Judea in the Levant, began migrating to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire. Although Alexandrian Jews had already migrated to Rome, a notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was the 63 BCE siege of Jerusalem.

The history of the Jews in Trieste goes back over 800 years.

The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition.

Trading diasporas is a term coined by Philip D. Curtin to mean: "communities of merchants living among aliens in associated networks".

Greece is a maritime nation by tradition, as shipping is arguably the oldest form of occupation of the Greeks and has been a key element of Greek economic activity since ancient times. Today, shipping is the country's most important industry worth $21.9 billion in 2018. If related businesses are added, the figure jumps to $23.7 billion, employs about 392,000 people, and shipping receipts are about 1/3 of the nation's trade deficit. In 2018, the Greek Merchant Navy controlled the world's largest merchant fleet, in terms of tonnage, with a total DWT of 834,649,089 tons and a fleet of 5,626 Greek-owned vessels, according to Lloyd's List. Greece is also ranked in the top for all kinds of ships, including first for tankers and bulk carriers.

Serbs in Italy, also referred to as Italian Serbs are a community numbering 46,958.

Emanuel Raphael Belilios, was a banker, opium dealer, philanthropist, and businessman, born in Calcutta, British India and active in Hong Kong. His father, Raphael Emanuel Belilios, was a member of a Jewish Venetian family. Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade. His success saw him described in the British press at the time as "one of the merchant princes of the colony."

Israel's Messenger, also known in Chinese as Youtai Yuebao, was an English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1904 to 1941. It was established by N.E.B. Ezra, who served as the paper's Editor-in-Chief for more than 30 years until his death in 1936, as the official newspaper of the Shanghai Association. It was one of China's oldest and most sophisticated Jewish periodicals, which also influenced the Jewish press.

Nissim Elias Benjamin Ezra (1883–1936), commonly known as N.E.B. Ezra, was a Baghdadi Jewish publisher and Zionist based in Shanghai. He founded the Shanghai Zionist Association in 1903 and its official newspaper, Israel's Messenger, one of China's oldest and most sophisticated Jewish periodicals. He served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper for more than 30 years until his death in 1936. Influenced by Ezra, his nephews started the newspaper Jewish Tribune in Bombay, India.

The Holocaust in Germany was the systematic persecution, deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews in Germany as part of the Europe-wide Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The term typically refers only to the areas that were part of Germany prior to the Nazi regime coming to power and excludes some or all of the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, such as Austria or the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

References

1 2 Fry, Helen P. (2002). "Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550-1950". European Judaism. 36. Frank Cass Publishers. ISBN 0-7146-8286-1. Port Jews were a social type, usually those who were involved in seafaring and maritime trade, who (like Court Jews) could be seen as the earliest modern Jews. Often arriving as refugees from the Inquisition, they were permitted to settle as merchants and allowed to trade openly in places such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. 'Their Diaspora connections and accumulated expertise lay in exactly the areas of overseas expansion that were then of interest to mercantilist governments.'
↑ Monaco, C. S. (2009). "Port Jews or a People of the Diaspora? A Critique of the Port Jew Concept". Jewish Social Studies. 15 (2): 137. doi:10.2979/jss.2009.15.2.137. S2CID 55471476.
↑ Sorkin, David (Spring 1999). "The Port Jew: Notes Toward a Social Type". Journal of Jewish Studies. 50 (1). Cambridge, England: 87–97. doi:10.18647/2168/JJS-1999.
↑ Dubin p. 47
1 2 3 4 5 Davis, Natalie (1997). "Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture in the Seventeenth Century". Representations (59): 60–74. doi:10.2307/2928815. JSTOR 2928815.
1 2 3 4 5 Zemon Davis, Natalie (1995). Women on the Margins. Boston: Harvard University Press. pp. 5–72. ISBN 0674955218 – via University of Michigan E-Book.
1 2 3 Tallan, Cheryl (1991). "Medieval Jewish Widows: Their Control of Resources". Jewish History. 5 (1). Springer: 63–74. doi:10.1007/BF01679794. S2CID 159840925.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[HelenFry-1] 1 2 Fry, Helen P. (2002). "Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550-1950". European Judaism. 36. Frank Cass Publishers. ISBN 0-7146-8286-1. Port Jews were a social type, usually those who were involved in seafaring and maritime trade, who (like Court Jews) could be seen as the earliest modern Jews. Often arriving as refugees from the Inquisition, they were permitted to settle as merchants and allowed to trade openly in places such as Amsterdam, London, Trieste and Hamburg. 'Their Diaspora connections and accumulated expertise lay in exactly the areas of overseas expansion that were then of interest to mercantilist governments.'

[2] Monaco, C. S. (2009). "Port Jews or a People of the Diaspora? A Critique of the Port Jew Concept". Jewish Social Studies. 15 (2): 137. doi:10.2979/jss.2009.15.2.137. S2CID 55471476.

[Sorkin-3] Sorkin, David (Spring 1999). "The Port Jew: Notes Toward a Social Type". Journal of Jewish Studies. 50 (1). Cambridge, England: 87–97. doi:10.18647/2168/JJS-1999.

[4] Dubin p. 47

[:2-5] 1 2 3 4 5 Davis, Natalie (1997). "Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture in the Seventeenth Century". Representations (59): 60–74. doi:10.2307/2928815. JSTOR 2928815.

[:1-6] 1 2 3 4 5 Zemon Davis, Natalie (1995). Women on the Margins. Boston: Harvard University Press. pp. 5–72. ISBN 0674955218 – via University of Michigan E-Book.

[:0-7] 1 2 3 Tallan, Cheryl (1991). "Medieval Jewish Widows: Their Control of Resources". Jewish History. 5 (1). Springer: 63–74. doi:10.1007/BF01679794. S2CID 159840925.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]