ABSTRACT
When Jews began to return in numbers to western Europe in the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Netherlands quickly became their most important single area of settlement. The test of the religious allegiance of the Antwerp ‘Portuguese’ was not so much their conduct under Spanish rule as their response to the arrival of William of Orange in 1577. The situation in the newly-independent provinces seemed even more hopeful, despite the fact that, at the moment when the Spanish shackles were thrown off, Jewish life in that region was virtually extinct. The Thirty Years War, between 1618 and 1648, could not fail to affect the newly arrived German Jewries, as it did political relations between Jews and Gentiles elsewhere in the vast area of combat, and indeed between the Gentile populations themselves. Jews were not allowed to do military service, but it was soon to become clear that civilian status was no guarantee of safety in war.
