‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘who is to be master – that’s all.’ Thus Lewis Caroll. Money is power, but not all power takes the form of money. Who was to be master in the urban centers – London, Livorno, Hamburg, Amsterdam – of the early modern Sephardic Diaspora in Western Europe? What did it mean to be a rabbi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Who decided and why? In this lecture we will look at these contentious and vexed questions in the lives of Hezekiah da Silva, Jacob Sasportas, and Hayim Joseph David Azulai.

Refreshments to follow

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