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It’s one of the Jewish world’s oldest still-active charities. But will theSanta Companhia de Dotar Orphas e Donzelas—a charitable fund founded in 1615 by Amsterdam’s wealthy Portuguese Jews to help marry off orphaned and needy Sephardic girls—survive the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe?
Lots of Tradition
The ritual may not be as elaborate as those pertaining to the Netherlands’s royal family, but there is definitely something regal about a ceremony that takes place every year, right after Purim, in Amsterdam’s historic Portuguese Synagogue. Board members of theSanta Companhia de Dotar Orphas e Donzelas (Holy Brotherhood of the Endowment of Orphans and Maidens)—known as Dotar, for short—don top hats and dark suits to carry three antique silver bowls into the synagogue’s main hall, where a small crowd is waiting.
After the chairman of the Dotar recites a short prayer for the founders of the charitable fund, it’s time for the main event to begin. Inside each of the covered bowls are lots inscribed with the names of young people eligible to win a gift of money to help pay for their wedding expenses. The bowls are given a shake and children from the community step forward to draw the names of the winners. Those names are duly recorded in a large communal book called the Termos (Resolutions), and members of the Dotar sign the record. Then the crowd retires to a smaller room, where refreshments are served.
This past Shushan Purim marked the 400th anniversary of the Dotar, whose work has been interrupted only once during its long history: the years 1943-1947, when members of Amsterdam’s Jewish community either fled, went into hiding, or were deported to the death camps during World War II.
“We have Termos books going back to 1615,” says Jaap Sondervan, the Dotar’s current chairman, whom I met while he was visiting Jerusalem. “The previous Termos included the war years. After the war, the survivors left two pages blank, and they started a new page. I get very emotional when I see this—the way that they turned the page and began again.”
It was a very different world that the Holocaust survivors returned to, just as the challenges facing today’s members of the Portuguese Jewish community are different from those of previous generations. But before we speak about today, we must turn back the pages to the early years of the seventeenth century, when the Spanish Inquisition was still active and Amsterdam was a beacon of tolerance for those fleeing from religious persecution.
From Converso to Chuppah
Sephardic Jews and crypto-Jews, or Conversos, from the Iberian Peninsula first arrived in Amsterdam in the late 1500s, after the city gained its independence from Spain. When Amsterdam became the world’s center of trade and finance during the seventeenth century, the Sephardic community prospered. Yet at the same time they felt a responsibility toward those Iberian Jews and Conversos who hadn’t fared so well, whether they lived in Amsterdam or had fled to other places in Europe. One outgrowth of this concern was the establishment of the Dotar.
According to historian Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, author of “Dowries and Dotar: An Unbroken Chain of 400 Years” – an essay she wrote in honor of its 400th anniversary – the original purpose of the Dotar was two-fold: to ensure that even poor Sephardic girls could marry and to encourage these girls to marry a halachically Jewish man and remain part of the Jewish community.
It was modeled upon a similar fund that had been set up by Sephardic Jews in Venice. But Amsterdam’s Dotar was initially more ambitious in scope. Amsterdam was often the first stop in northern Europe for Conversos, and so the primary mission of the Dotar was to help the young women who had fled from the Inquisitions in Spain and Portugal—some of whom had seen their parents burned at the stake, and most of whom had very little in the way of material possessions. However, many Conversos fled to southern France, England, Germany and even the New World, and eligible young women from these places could be entered in the lottery.
In the meantime, poverty-stricken Jews from other parts of Europe were streaming into Amsterdam, attracted by the generosity of the Jewish community, which was finding it increasingly difficult to provide for all the poor. By 1618, just three years after its founding, the Dotar was forced to limit its scope of operations. Young women living in Amsterdam were given first priority, although those living elsewhere could still enter the lottery.
Character Counts
The amounts given to the lottery winners were generous. In 1615, a winner might receive between $4,000 and $10,000. In the eighteenth century, the maximum award was set at about $54,000. Therefore, the members of the Dotar instituted strict rules concerning who could apply. First, of course, the candidate had to be able to prove that she was of Spanish or Portuguese descent. Other criteria included being of marriageable age (between 16-40 years old), the person’s financial status, agreeing to lead a halachically Jewish life, relationship to Dotar members, and being of “good conduct, honorable, honest, and blameless.”
Young women living in distant lands had to have their petition signed by local rabbanim who could attest to the applicant’s good character and whatever else was required in the application. If someone was living in a country where she could not yet openly practice Judaism, she could still apply; however, if she won, she couldn’t receive the money until she was living in a place where she and her husband could have a Jewish wedding and live openly as Jews.
Although there were often hundreds of applicants competing for the prize, winning the lottery didn’t always guarantee that the winner would get married. At first the winner had three years to find a husband, although later the time period was extended to twelve years. Why was it so hard to find a shidduch?
One reason, which applied to young women who were still living as secret Jews, was that it wasn’t easy to pick up and leave their home and settle in a new country where they could live openly as Jews—a stipulation of the lottery. Another stipulation was that the chassanhad to be a circumcised Jewish man and so he, too, had to be willing to shed his Converso identity. Later on, when there was a general moral decline in Europe, the Dotar began to scrutinize the character of the proposed bridegroom as well. Not only did he need to be honest and reputable, but he also had to prove that he could support a family. Some people didn’t like the probing into their personal affairs, and so they preferred to decline the Dotar’s gift. Others didn’t like the stigma of being labeled poor and also preferred to marry without the Dotar’s help.
If the lottery winner couldn’t find a spouse within the time limit, the money she would have received went back into the fund.
Join the Club
The Dotar was funded by its members, who paid about $2,000 to join what was considered to be Jewish Amsterdam’s elite social circle. At its height there were between 400-500 members, which made the Dotar one of the largest charitable institutions in Portuguese-Jewish Amsterdam.
Membership was inheritable and there were those who saw the hefty initial fee as a good investment. For one thing, dowry winners who were related to members received larger sums. Therefore, one’s children, grandchildren and even more distant relations could be helped by that initial decision to join the Dotar.
A second incentive was the knowledge that the “wheel of fortune” could always turn. Even if a merchant was so wealthy that he didn’t need help with marrying off his children at the present time, who knew what the future would bring? If his financial state should sour, at least his descendants could still qualify for the larger gifts.
The Dotar Today
Today the Dotar has about 80 active members. They have to be Dutch citizens, be born from parents who had an Orthodox wedding, and have at least one parent descended from Spanish-Portuguese Jews.
Poverty is no longer a criterion for entering the lottery, and today young men can also enter their names. But to receive a dowry and wedding gift, the recipient needs the same qualifications as members. The only exception is for the lottery open to orphans living in Israel. They don’t need to be Dutch citizens, but they do need parents who are of Spanish-Portuguese descent and who had an Orthodox wedding.
According to Jaap Sondervan, the Dotar is in good shape financially. It’s awarding the money that is the problem.
“Only about 50 percent of the community’s children get married according to halacha and are eligible to enter the lottery,” he explains. “The rest either don’t get married or marry out.”
As for the lottery for the orphans, that too has its difficulties. “Our first preference is to give to someone living in Israel,” he comments. “It’s hard to find eligible people because the person has to be of Iberian-Sephardic descent. Also, we don’t give money to an organization. We only give directly to the person.”
Sondervan is a relatively new member of the Dotar. On his father’s side, he has Ashkenazic roots. However, his mother’s family, the Sephardic Cohen Paraira family, has been associated with the fund for generations.
Sondervan’s commitment to both the Dotar and Amsterdam’s Portuguese community is evident, but he is a realist. The rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe hasn’t escaped his notice or that of other members of the kehillah.
“What is the future?” he asks. “The community is becoming smaller. Some people are moving to Israel, although at this point not a lot. More troublesome is intermarriage and assimilation.
“The community wants to keep its traditions,” he adds. “If everyone were to make aliyah, I don’t think the Portuguese community would survive as a distinct kehillah.”
In the meantime, Sondervan has no intention of discarding his top hat. As long as there is a Portuguese presence in Amsterdam, he and the other members of the Dotar intend to keep the fund going, while remaining true to its original mission: encouraging young Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent to marry Jewish and remain part of this historic, culturally-rich community.
Published: July 27th, 2015
Latest update: August 3rd, 2015
Source: Jewish Press
