Ginger pastries, conversos and the
Spanish Inquisition
After the Alteration in 1578, when Amsterdam
turned Protestant, the city provided a home for immigrants escaping persecution
and poverty elsewhere in Europe. Sephardic Jews flocked there from Spain and
Portugal, particularly after 1609 when the authorities lifted their embargo on
foreign travel. Many exiles were conversos - families the Inquisition had forced
to convert to Catholicism on point of death.
This so-called Portuguese Nation lived
alongside other immigrant communities, on overcrowded reclaimed islands outside
the city walls. The largest Vloonburg was located to the south of present
day Jodenbreestraat, on the site of Waterlooplein transport hub.
By 1614 there were around 164 families.
Rabbis managed to acquire the first synagogue and a burial plot. Miriam Bodian provides a detailed picture of
the challenges they faced in her book Hebrews of the Portuguese, which I
used when researching Naming the Dead. Gradually, the conversos came to
a new understanding of their complex heritage, Jewish beliefs and practices.
Amsterdam’s Jewish Museum charts the story of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews who arrived later from eastern Europe, plus more recent experiences of Anne Frank and others during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The museum cafĂ© is said to serve gemberbolus (ginger-studded pastries) which I would like to try. In Naming the Dead, my fictional character Raphael Barr, an elderly Jewish patient, makes his living baking these using his late wife’s recipe from Spain.
Naming in Blood (Baxby Mystery 2) is available on Kindle Unlimited and to buy at UK Link and US Link