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This chapter highlights the various aspects of the daily lives of the poor. In Amsterdam, the poor among the Portuguese Jewish community ranged from the highly educated to the illiterate. On the one hand there were those whose sense of honour debarred them from asking for poor relief, and on the other there were those described as inveterate beggars. There were men and women; large, complete families and fragmented units; and there were people left completely on their own. Some were healthy or young or both, others old or sick or both, with all sorts of variations between them. Many applied for poor relief no more than occasionally; others relied permanently on outside help. The poor relief provided by the Portuguese community constituted no more than a supplement to income from work, private funds, and legacies, and help from friends, relatives, private charity, and other sources. Sephardi Jews who had no access to these sources, or who missed out in other ways, found themselves forced to seek their fortune elsewhere sooner or later.

This chapter presents a demographic outline of poverty in the Portuguese Jewish community in early modern Amsterdam. It has become clear from examining records of the numbers of people on poor relief that at times the community was larger than used to be assumed. Behind the beautiful façade of prosperity and grandeza that the community liked to show to the outside world, the kahal had to wrestle with the ever more pressing dilemma of having to look after paupers, who had flocked to Amsterdam expecting to find there a safe and sheltered life, free of persecution, war, and economic depression. By the end of the seventeenth century, a third of all Portuguese Jews were drawing permanent poor relief and almost half were drawing either permanent or temporary poor relief. Portuguese on welfare were often found in small families, mostly headed by women; larger families tended to be headed by men. In the eighteenth century, the character of Portuguese poverty changed. From then on—with the exception of single women—the poor were dominated by men trying to support their families through the economic slump with financial help from the Portuguese community.

This chapter addresses Isaac Orobio de Castro's critique of the Arbor Scientiæ (1663) of the Franciscan theologian Raymond Lull. Having read the translation of Spanish officer don Alonso de Zepeda, Orobio composed a short tract. In this treatise, Orobio did not set out to deal with Lull's theology in full. Rather, he chose to rain shattering blows on the way in which Lull had attempted, in accordance with his overall system, to prove the existence of the holy trinity, also questioning the methodological structure on which Lull's religious philosophy was in general based. Meanwhile, the speed with which Orobio integrated himself into the Portuguese-Jewish community is eloquent not only of the extent to which the congregation had attuned itself to the social and spiritual absorption of crypto-Jews reverting to Judaism, but also of Orobio's own readiness to play an active part in the communal life of its membership. The chapter then considers Orobio's medical practice in Amsterdam.

This chapter discusses Isaac Orobio's encounters with philosophers, theologians, and poets. In 1684, Orobio published in Amsterdam his Certamen Philosophicum, Propugnatae Veritatis Divinae ac Naturalis adversus Joh. Bredenburg. This work was received with marked respect in philosophical circles in Holland and abroad, and it constituted Orobio one of the leaders of the campaign against Barukh Spinoza's philosophy. The chapter then considers the debate which took place in Amsterdam between Orobio and Christian theologian Philip van Limborch. It also looks at how, in 1685, a number of writers, poets, and lovers of poetry and art in the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam founded a literary society with the name of La Academia de los Florido. Orobio was a founder-member and one of the regular participants in its proceedings.