Abstract:

In 1644 a regulation was enacted by the Sephardi community in Amsterdam condemning any member who would abandon Judaism and go to Spain or Portugal or to one of their colonies, or to any other Christian country where the practice of Judaism was forbidden. Those who transgressed this regulation would be required, after returning from 'the Lands of Idolatry', to ask forgiveness before the whole congregation, and for four years would be denied the honor of being called to the Torah. They would not be able to hold any office in the community during that time. Similar regulations were enacted in the Sephardi communities of Leghorn (1655), Hamburg (1657), and London (1677). This article analyzes the historical background of these regulations and in doing so examines the economic and political relations between the western Sephardi Jews and the Iberian kingdoms during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These regulations were established during a period of intensive economic interactio

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