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This chapter illustrates a twofold journey of Conversos, a physical trek northward to freedom and a spiritual journey to the practice of Judaism, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They had no personal experience of life in a Jewish community after the Expulsion from Spain. What united them was a sense of shared oppression at the hands of the Inquisition in Portugal and the collective memory, however faint, of being portugueses de la nación hebrea, homens de nação, or simply members of the nação, the 'Nation'. The chapter explores a distinctive social unit that Conversos formed with extraordinarily tight bonds in Seville, Madrid, Lima, and elsewhere, and a sense of kinship with other Portuguese and Spanish Conversos, wherever they were. This background produced a new and different historical trajectory. The Amsterdam community outstripped the others in culture and affluence and served as their model and guide. Amsterdam, in turn, drew its models of the Jewish community from the Sephardim of Venice. It also examines the emerging new political reality, United Provinces of the Netherlands, and a new model of the Jewish community, the western Sephardi diaspora.

This chapter highlights the Torah mantle, which was the last of the ceremonial objects to evolve for the wrapping of the Torah scroll. Just as garments reflect the status of their wearers in all cultures, so the mantle plays a similar role. Thus, a mantle is donated not only in order to protect the scroll, to give thanks to God, or to commemorate someone who has passed away; it is also a means of acquiring social status in the congregation and demonstrating one's wealth. This is especially evident in congregations in Italy and the Portuguese diaspora, whose mantles compete with each other with their wonderful gold embroidery, even though most of them lack any inscription or Jewish content. Flaunting wealth in the synagogue by donating ceremonial objects is especially ingrained in the Sephardi and Italian heritage as a result of the restrictions placed by rabbis on wearing sumptuous outer garments so as not to arouse jealousy among non-Jews. In contrast, in Ashkenazi congregations, the social status of the donors is demonstrated primarily through the use of honorific titles in the dedications, though beautiful embroidery and luxurious materials may be used to enhance the effect.

This chapter focuses on the Torah wrapper and the Torah binder. The wrapper, the piece of fabric rolled up with the parchment scroll, is an item used in the wrapping of the Torah scroll in Italy and the Sephardi diaspora of exiles from Spain and Portugal. In Italy, the wrapper is known as the mapah, indicating that it evolved from the first ceremonial object connected to the Torah scroll in antiquity, inheriting its name. Meanwhile, the binder is a long, thin piece of cloth bound around the Torah scroll. In Italy and in Sephardi diaspora congregations, it is bound over the wrapper, while in other communities it is placed directly next to the parchment scroll. What makes the Italian binders unique is that they are rooted in the embroidery and lace-work traditions of the Italian Renaissance and baroque period.

This chapter offers an introduction to Jewish life in Livorno while investigating the close bonds connecting Livornese Jews with the Tuscan state and culture. It first discusses the Livornina charter (1593), which lay the ground for Jewish life in the Tuscan port, and the exceptional status of Livorno. It then moves to analyzing the interconnection between the governance structures of the nazione ebrea and the Tuscan administration, an arrangement that distinguishes Livorno from other contemporary Sephardi centers. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of the Tuscan Enlightenment in the study of Livornese Jewish history. Under the rule of Francis Stephen of Lorraine and Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine Tuscan culture and policies were defined by attention to economic, social, and cultural reform. This reforming vocation provides a vantage point to study the Livornese Jewish encounter with outside culture as well as the ways in which Livornese Jews engaged with Enlightenment policies.

This chapter draws comparative conclusions about the significance of the Livornese example. While the specificity of Enlightenment Tuscany and the system of the port of Livorno account for its distinctiveness, this case study has larger implications for Sephardi and Italian Jewish history. First, the chapter recapitulates the ways in which the Livornese model of intellectual engagement with eighteenth-century culture offers an alternative to the Anglo-Jewish Enlightenment and to the Haskalah in its early and later phases, comparing Livornese scholars to further Italian and Sephardi examples. It then offers final remarks on the ways in which the confrontation with the reforming absolutism that defined eighteenth-century Tuscan policies provided another crucial venue for Livornese Jewry's encounter with Enlightenment ideas. In particular, the continued importance of the corporate nazione ebrea is significant when comparing Livorno with contemporary Italian examples, as well as with the cases of Bordeaux, Amsterdam, and London.