From pastoral to georgic: the Dutch Jewish country house as a rhizome

ABSTRACT

Scholars often analyze houses’ “Jewishness” vis-à-vis Jewish law and rituals. For Dutch Sephardic Jews during the long eighteenth century, however, identity is better understood using a model of rhizome in which “Jewishness” consists of the deliberate interbraiding of multiple traditions. Jewish identity was inextricable from the cultures in which Jews lived. Jewish homes along the Vecht River near Amsterdam exemplify the rhizome model. They embody the same braided pastoral ideal found in eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardic literature and material culture. As Sephardic Jews relocated to Netherlands Antilles, the rhizome present in country houses shifted, taking into account Jews’ new role as slave owners. Thus while buitenplaatsen along the Vecht embraced the Jewish pastoral ideal of a retreat from mercantile life, landhuizen in Curaçao evoked a georgic ideal that channelled the residents’ gaze not on rivers, gardens, and grottos, but on guard stations, slave huts, and enslaved workers. Leisure became redefined as an ability to watch rather than retreat from labour. Taken together, Dutch Jewish country houses along the Vecht and in Curaçao challenge the notion that Jewish material culture has a “single root system.”