Overdue Redemption and Overstayed Welcomes: The Straus Center’s Winter Break Trip to Amsterdam
“I assume you’re definitely going to go to the Anne Frank House, right?”
Well no, actually that was not on the official itinerary for the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought’s winter break trip to Amsterdam. As a Straus Scholar, I can attest that I got this question from almost every adult I spoke to before the trip, and I wasn’t the only one. After many awkward conversations, myself and some of the other students inquired about this scheduling decision with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, the center’s director, and his response exposed the learning opportunities pregnant in the Straus Center’s trip to Amsterdam.
Soloveichik explained that unlike many of the countries we learn about in Jewish History courses, the Dutch government is remarkable in an important way — it never kicked out its Jews.
This was a major shift from the countries that Amsterdam’s Sephardic Jews had fled from, like Spain and Portugal. Did Dutch Jews suffer greatly in World War II? Of course. Were Dutch Jews brutally murdered? It’s not even a question. But that was the Third Reich, not the Dutch government. As the Straus Center demonstrated through its travels, there is much uniquely Dutch, rich and positive Jewish history that took place before the Holocaust.
The first day of the trip consisted of four lectures meant to orient the scholars in Amsterdam’s Jewish history, sort of a historical yom iyun. Rabbi Dov Lerner, clinical assistant professor at the Straus Center, lectured on the unique Messianic movements and subsequent rabbinic arguments that took place in Amsterdam, which were caused by the unprecedented flourishing of Jewish life. The Messianic winds were so strong that rabbis who stood on the other side of the aisle felt the need to specifically end their sermons with “Bimheira B’yameinu,” meaning “soon in our days,” in order to explicitly signify to their congregation that the Messianic era has yet to come, a point that was facing legitimate contention.
Lerner was followed by an exploration of the Ramchal’s L’Yisharim Tehilah led by Professor Shaina Trapedo, director of both campuses’ honors programs and resident scholar and recruitment officer at the Straus Center. Rabbi Stuart Halpern, the senior advisor to the provost of Yeshiva University and deputy director of the Straus Center, followed with a lesson on Menasheh Ben Israel, a major figure in the Dutch Messianic trends, who felt that the Native Americans may be the ten lost tribes. Professor Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a senior scholar at the Straus Center, closed with a presentation on Dutch influence on American presidents and politics. To ensure general familiarity with the area, the day of programming ended with a canal tour around the city.
The rest of the trip featured Jewish history in action. Ironically, a lot of focus was placed on Rembrandt, a non-Jewish artist. But don’t let that fool you — Rembrandt’s art is a key aspect of Amsterdam’s Jewish history, both in terms of Rembrandt’s depiction of Biblical scenes and the Jewish community’s involvement in Rembrandt’s art. Many of the models for Rembrandt’s paintings were Jews of the community, and the Jews sanctioned Rembrandt to paint their religious events, like brit milot, both a result of Rembrandt living in the Jewish area. The Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam involved themselves in the culture and art that the city had to offer, demonstrating an intellectual exploration of religious Jews not necessarily replicated as intensely in other places and points of European Jewish history.
Many of the Straus scholars gained a newfound appreciation for Rembrandt. One of his most famous biblical paintings, “Saul and David,” created in the 1650s, depicts the complicated, contentious and emotionally tumultuous relationship between Saul and a young King David, and deeply impacted many of the students.
“I was surprised that I felt myself being moved emotionally and spiritually when seeing Rembrandt’s Saul and David,” commented Gavriel Perla (YC ‘28), a new student of the Straus Center. As Soloveichik posited on the trip, Rembrandt and his work with light and shadows and ability to capture human experience is truly one of the best.
In addition to the relationship between Rembrandt and the Jews, the Jews themselves saw flourishing in Amsterdam. The Straus Center had the opportunity of visiting the Esnoga, an enormous synagogue with gold detailing, candles on almost every table and a massive wooden Ahron Kodesh. In its heyday, the synagogue was full of Jews at prayer, and even the occasional non-Jewish onlooker. For the first time in European Jewish history, the Jews felt welcome, settled and invigorated enough to build a grand synagogue that was meant to last. Legal injunctions in other countries, as well as a mindset of guesthood, kept Jews from building some large structures. The permission, however, for Dutch Jews to build higher than the local church signifies Jewish acceptance in Amsterdam. The Sephardic Dutch Jewish experience was historically prosperous, making way for its grand expressions of Jewish practice and presumptions of redemption in Europe.
And then there’s the present state — and it’s not as simple a story.
Besides the highlight of the Straus Center’s visit to Kleinblatt Bakery of Antwerp, the famed European bakery, much of the current state of Dutch Jewry felt dim — and not because of the Jewish community itself, which is active and has multiple synagogues and restaurants. The trip opened with a security instruction that was both disheartening and disappointing: It was recommended that the men remove their kippot for most of the trip. Some pulled up their hoods, some wrapped scarves and not everyone even complied, but the fact that it was a consideration was a new experience for almost everyone on the trip. Bookending the unfortunate opening announcement was a visit to the Hague, a place of infamous and demoralizing antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
To be sure, the Straus Center did end up visiting the Anne Frank House as a group. But it was far more reminiscent of the current unfortunate attitude towards Jews in the Netherlands than it is of the glorious Dutch Jewish history that is no longer. It doesn’t seem that the Messianic vision has truly played out in the way Dutch Jews might have hoped. But, rest assured, this does not necessitate despair. Yes, the current European climate can be a scary one for Jews. That said, one of the consistent themes of L’Yisharim Tehilah, the Ramchal’s play that Trapedo presented to us, is the value of understanding that there are moral ebbs and flows in history, and one should be patient and confident that the end result will be one of righteousness. As Ramchal writes, “[f]or all the trouble of your soul that you experience, you will find the fruit of your faith in its season, and be satisfied forever.”
The Straus Center’s trip was a powerful, if not complicated one. As Noam Schechter (YC ‘27) put it, “walking through the streets of Amsterdam and understanding the great people, both Jewish and secular, who have walked there before you creates a feeling of awe, reverence and mission.” And yet, as the trip demonstrated, the Jewish community is going through a rocky period of public perception, and it’s not the first time. But the itinerary of the Straus Center’s trip to Amsterdam demonstrated to the Straus Scholars how Jews must hold out throughout the violent shifts in history, and just as the Jews of Amsterdam once flourished, we will, one day, find full redemptive solace. Not, G-d willing, in a far-off country, but in Eretz Yisrael and Yerushalayim. Bimheira B’yameinu, amen.
Photo Caption: Inside the Esnoga, the Orthodox Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam
Photo Credit: Ava Eden
