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5 - ‘Dissonant Words’, ‘Bad Opinions’, and ‘Scandals’: Varieties of Religious Discord and Social Conflict

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Summary

I would like you [synagogue elders] to answer one question: if these groundless fears which you instil in the minds of men are contrived to restrain their natural inclination to evil and to keep them from going astray, did it never occur to you that you then likewise are men full of malice, unable to do what is good, ever prone to evil, injurious, without compassion or mercy? But I see every one of you filled with rage at so insolent a question and justifying his own conduct. ‘What, are we not all pious and merciful and strict adherers to truth and justice?’ Either what you boastingly say of yourselves is false or your accusation of all other men, whose natural propensity to evil you pretend to correct with your fictitious terrors, is unjust.

URIEL DA COSTA

FOR some individuals, certain requirements of membership of the Kahal Kados de Talmud Tora were too onerous to be passed over in silence. The Mahamad, for their part, regarded some infractions as just too serious to be overlooked. Conflicts ensued. The Mahamad applied the only powers it possessed: the right to deny someone all or some of the privileges of membership of the Kahal, and excommunication, which not only cancelled a person's membership but also removed him from any and all interaction with the nação. The yehidim responded by swallowing their pride and settling their differences, or by severing their ties with the Kahal. In the latter option Amsterdam's Portuguese Jews possessed a latitude rarely encountered in pre-modern Jewish communities. This relative freedom, in turn, imposed clear and immediate restraints upon the exercise of authority by the parnasim. Too incongruous or indiscriminate an application of force might alienate a yahid and result in his departure from the Kahal.

There existed little by way of an independent court to adjudicate in communal conflicts, whether between individuals or between yehidim and parnasim. The records do occasionally refer to a rabbinical court, but its mandate appears to have been limited to strictly religious matters. Capitolo 20 of the communal agreement has the following to say about the Bet Din, the rabbinical court:

All the dinim that will present themselves and that will have to be decided upon will be seen and examined by the salaried hahamim, according to a majority vote.

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Reluctant Cosmopolitans
The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam
, pp. 225 - 277
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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