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Library Ets Haim – Livraria Montezinos

Inscribed 2003

What is it

The entire collection of Ets Haim Library – Livraria Montezinos, comprising approximately 500 manuscripts and around 30,000 printed works in 20,000 volumes.

Why was it inscribed

The collections allow an understanding of the unique combination of Jewish religious and secular education provided by the Portuguese-Jewish Community in Amsterdam from 1616 until the Second World War.

They also reflect the cultural and social history of a Jewish community that contributed substantially to the rise of the Dutch Republic and the New World in the age of mercantilism.

Where is it

Portuguese-Jewish Seminary Ets Haim, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The Ets Haim (Tree of Life) Academy has been internationally renowned since the Dutch Golden Age. Its rich collections of manuscripts, books, sheet music and graphic materials reflect the institute’s influence until the early 20th century and the international ties it maintained.

The collections of the Library Ets Haim – Livraria Montezinos comprise 500 manuscripts dating from 1282 onwards and 30,000 printed works, the earliest from 1484; around 65 percent are in Hebrew. The printed books include six Hebrew incunabula (books printed before 1501), four hundred Hebrew unique works, approximately 400 unique and rare Spanish and Portuguese works and 750 ephemera. Ets Haim also has approximately 250 prints and sheet music for children’s and men’s choirs.

The collections are a unique and irreplaceable example of Sephardic Jewish heritage. The culture of the Sephardic Jews, who originated in the Iberian Peninsula, was characterized by open exchange with their environment – integration without assimilation. Continuing this tradition, the curriculum of Ets Haim combined a thorough Jewish education in combination with an excellent knowledge of literature, philosophy, rhetoric and science. In training its students for leadership positions in international Sephardic communities, the institute made important contributions to societies in which several religions coexisted peacefully. In addition, Sephardic Jews, based in this location since 1675, were central to the rise and prosperity of the Dutch Republic and mercantilism in the Golden Age.

The collections reflect the 17th-century humanist ideal, documenting all fields of human knowledge, science and activities. Many editions are available of all Jewish standard works: editions of the Bible, exegetic, hermeneutic, homiletic, legal and didactic works, and there are also various Christian publications. History, language and literature, rhetoric, calligraphy, lexicography, medicine, mysticism and economics are all represented.

The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, home to the library.

The vast liturgical collection comprises virtually all Jewish prayer books printed in the Netherlands. In addition to Hebrew and Aramaic books, the library contains works in Latin, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, English, Yiddish and other languages. The collection represents the history of the output of Jewish book printing from Eastern Europe to the Americas and from Portugal via the Levant to Cochin.

In 1889 the then librarian David Montezinos donated his valuable personal collection to the library and since then it has been known as Ets Haim Library – Livraria Montezinos.

Since the monumental complex of the Portuguese Synagogue was built in Amsterdam in 1675, the library has been located there almost continuously, with the exception of its confiscation for some years by Germany during the Second World War.