Jews of Holland & Belgium

Jews of Holland & Belgium: A Remarkable Journey

Explore the rich, often surprising story of the Jews of Holland and Belgium, brought to life by Dr. Henry Abramson, a Jewish Orthodox historian and Dean of Lander College for Men at Touro University. His short, engaging video series traces how Jewish communities in Amsterdam and Antwerp navigated Golden Age prosperity, religious tension, modernity, and the tragedies of the 20th century.

Highlights from the Jews of Holland & Belgium collection include:

• The Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695 and the remarkable illustrator Abraham Bar Ya’akov.
• The dramatic lives of figures such as Uriel da Costa, Menasseh ben Israel, and Rebecca of Tienen, one of the earliest Jews identified in Belgium.
• Stories of Dutch refuge and tolerance, from early modern Amsterdam to Rabbi Moshe Hayim Luzzatto and the rise of modern Jewish life in the Low Countries.
• The Amsterdam general strike of February 1941 and the devastating wartime saga of Dutch Jewry.
• Moving portraits of heroes like Walter Süskind, who helped save 600 Jewish children in Amsterdam.

Through 26 bite-sized videos, viewers meet scholars, merchants, converts, community leaders, and rescuers, each adding a vivid layer to the long, resilient history of the Jews of Holland and Belgium. It is an inviting gateway for anyone curious about Jewish history, European culture, or the deeper story behind today’s Jewish communities in the Low Countries.

(To view the videos full-size, click the YouTube button in each video.)

BIO: Dr. Henry Abrahamson – Jewish Orthodox Historian

Dr. Abramson, a specialist in Jewish history and thought, serves as the Dean of Lander College for Men, Touro University.

He earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1995 and has held visiting and post-doctoral fellowships at Cornell, Harvard, Oxford, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is the author of several books, including A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920 (Harvard, 1999) and Reading the Talmud: Developing Independence in Gemara Learning (Feldheim, 2006).

His research has been recognized by awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

He is a recipient of the Excellence in the Academy Award from the National Education Association. His current projects include the Jewish History in Daf Yomi podcast on All Daf and The Jewish People: A History (3 volumes) for Koren Publishers.