ABSTRACT
Aside from Amsterdam, the cities of Zwolle, The Hague and Rotterdam became the most famous centres of Jewish life. Zwolle, where Jews had settled in the Middle Ages, was an important home port in the east of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century. There the guilds of Jewish merchants had more rights than anywhere else in the country. David Jacobs Stibbe was named chief rabbi of Zwolle in 1772 and served the Jewish community there for almost seventy years. His fame spread far and wide. He had arrived originally as a chazan (cantor) and safer (transcriber of Torah scrolls), and meanwhile ran a pharmacy.
