The Beautiful Couple From Amsterdam

I woke up in the morning and saw the news about a pogrom against Jews in Amsterdam. Then I wrote this:

Two years ago, my wife and I snuck into the rooftop pool of the William Vale hotel in Williamsburg. While riding up in the elevator, we met a nice couple from Amsterdam. Both were in their late twenties. They were tall, blonde, muscular, and generally very healthy looking. The guy, I forgot his name, let’s call him Erik, proudly told us that he was the founder of a successful tech startup based in the Netherlands. The girl, let’s call her Yara, was studying to be a doctor. They seemed to be in a relationship, sort of. Mostly, it seemed like they had simply coupled up for a fun trip across the United States. Neither of them had been there before, and they were doing an ambitious trip covering both the East and West Coast.

I was excited to talk with them and show them around. I told them they were very cool for visiting Brooklyn. Too many tourists think a trip to New York City is nothing more than seeing Times Square and Central Park. I also appreciated that they were interested in talking to us. Personally, I don’t easily make conversation with total strangers when traveling, and that’s a shame because meeting locals can be much more illuminating than staring at the facade of an old building.

Eventually, Yara asked us about our relationship. “How long have you guys been together?” she asked.
We told her that, despite being in our late twenties, we had already been married for several years. Also, we only dated for three months before getting engaged. Yara and Erik were shocked. Was this a normal thing to do in America? We then explained that we were raised as Orthodox Jews, where it’s perfectly normal to date young and for a short period before getting married.

In truth, I have yet to find the perfect formula for when to reveal my immense Jewishness in a conversation. When I don’t bring it up, I feel like I’m purposely hiding something. When I do bring it up, I feel like I’m oversharing.

But the tour guide in me felt good. The couple from Amsterdam came to New York to experience the people and culture. And here I am, letting them know that the likelihood of encountering a Jewish person in New York City is about 15%. That means that if a Chabad person stands on an NYC street corner yelling, “Excuse me, are you Jewish?” to as few as ten people and they all say no, one of them is lying. Furthermore, 3% of the entire NYC population is Orthodox Jews, totaling approximately six hundred thousand people. The willingness of this couple to engage with locals immediately led them to meet a modest but notable and unique sector of New York City’s population.

What happened next was a bit of a shock.

Erik and Yara told us that, despite being highly educated and worldly people, they had never met a Jew before. Yara clarified, “It’s possible that I have, but I don’t think anyone back home would specifically tell me that they were Jewish, even if they were.”

As a New York Jew, I found that hard to believe because who in New York doesn’t know about Kosher Deli, Seinfeld, or some other cultural reference that simply reminds everyone of my people’s presence here? Who doesn’t know someone named Goldstein, Schwartz, or Abramowitz? The couple from Amsterdam did not. We chatted for another hour. Erik asked a lot of questions about what it means to be Jewish, which I did my best to answer, and we parted as friends.

I went home and did some Googling.

Jews made up 10% of Amsterdam’s population in 1939. Back then, it was a large, flourishing Jewish community of 140,000 people with 70 synagogues throughout the city. Part of the Jewish population were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 for a safe haven in the Netherlands.

During the Nazi invasion, some Dutch people attempted to protest and even hide their Jewish neighbors and friends. Others were sympathetic to the Nazis and gladly took their property and homes as the Jews were shipped off to concentration camps. After the war ended, there were some attempts by the government to restore property to the remaining ten thousand Jewish survivors. Those attempts were not very successful, and most of the survivors chose to move to greener pastures in Israel and the United States.

Today, Amsterdam’s Jewish population is less than 1% of the city’s total. There are only eight synagogues left. To most of us, the rich legacy of Amsterdam’s Jewry is relegated to the fact that Dutch Jews only wait one hour to eat dairy after meat, while the rest of Orthodox Jews wait a full six hours. Sadly, other than that, I know little about them.

I feel bad for Yara and Erik, that despite their high level of education and worldliness, they had to be almost thirty years old to fly across the Atlantic Ocean just to meet someone who would actually tell them they are Jewish. Had they lived in the same city a hundred years earlier, they could have met some nice Jewish people closer to home.