I’m getting all of this from Marc Ponte, a public historian researching 17th century migration and slavery in Amsterdam, Brazil and Suriname. Ponte shared a wonderful twitter thread about the performance of Hester, of Verloosing der jooden by Johanne Serwouters, performed almost annually at the Amsterdam Schowburg starting in 1659. Before that the Purim story was performed at improvised theaters in warehouses and cellars in the city’s Jewish neighborhood.
Ponte found a piece of historical evidence from the city’s notarial department. The case involved the appeal of 4 Jews appealing against an attempt by the city to ban the play. Mention is made that the performance of these kinds plays had long been performed in the city.
Ponte’s Twitter thread runs as follows:
Mark Ponte, https://twitter.com/voetnoot/status/1771451309096386940
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries #Purim Hester’s story was played out in warehouses and cellars around Vluivenburg. In 1722, Salomon Elias Cohen ‘the Fireworker’ was charged with playing ‘comedien buyten de schouwburg’
Cohen felt this was unfair, because this had been tolerated by the city of Amsterdam for a long time. On April 22, 1722, he had four witnesses present to the notary Johannes Vilekens on Sint Antoniesbreestraat ‘near the Zuiderkerk’, opposite Huis de Pinto.
Benjamin Eliasar, Markus Levie, Levie Sijmons and Moses Raphaels declare that since childhood they have known nothing other than that during Purim in ‘packhuijsen oft cellars (…) in the High German Jewish Tael [Yiddish mp] den Inhout of the History of Hester’ was played
The witnesses say that the performances were performed every year without any problems, even long before their birth. One of the witnesses, 54-year-old Marcus Levie, cited the story of his much older (and now long deceased) brother.
The brother, who was born around 1628, had not only told Levie that the story of Esther had been played with Purim since he was a child, but that he had also often performed on stage himself, both for Haman and for others. characters.
In the mid-17th century, Rembrandt also lived in the area. It is possible that he witnessed the Jewish celebrations and performances up close and was inspired by his print The Triumph of Mordecai (ca 1641).
Title: The Triumph of Mordecai
Artist: Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam)
Date: ca. 1641
Medium: Etching and drypoint
Dimensions: sheet: 6 15/16 x 8 11/16 in. (17.6 x 22 cm)
Classification: Prints
To Ponte’s tweet which includes the image, I would only add the following. In the etching, Rembrandt, so utterly Jewish, frames the triumph of Mordechai in the intimation of architecture in the intimation of an urban scene. What Ponte’s post makes unclear is if the etching represents the triumph of Mordechai in Shushan, the capital, or rather its theatrical representation in Amsterdam.
[With many thanks to Marc Ponte for sharing this on Purim]
