Introduction

The texts presented here come from various Sephardic archival funds : the resolution of the London Mahamad (1705)  is an excerpt from the Minute book of the Mahamad of the Portuguese Community Shaar Hashamayim from London¹ ; the letters addressed to Bordeaux (1728), London (1733) and Ferrara (1753) come from three different registers of the outgoing correspondence of the Portuguese Community of Amsterdam, Talmud Torah. The outgoing correspondence of Kahal Kadosh Talmud Torah community (borador de cartas for the first one and copiador de cartas ) has been preserved, except for a few gaps, from 1702 onwards,  and contains over five thousand letters for the eighteenth century alone, addressed to a large number of communities as well as to a wide range of private persons², and constitutes an outstanding source not only for the history of the  Sephardic networks, but also for the internal history of some of the Portuguese communities for which the pinkassim are not extant, such as for Bayonne, or where the available community registers is a late compilation, such as Bordeaux,  and the same considerations apply for the Caribbean nations.
The letter to Surinam dated 1723 comes from the copybook of outgoing correspondence of Abraham da Costa, who acts as both a broker for the Surinam kehillah and planters in the 1720’S. His letterbook, a thick register of 558 folios starts in 1722 and covers 10 years; as a mercantile source, it is an exceptional document for studying a case of commission agency, but it is also very interesting for our purpose because it also contains numerous letters to the parnassim of the Surinam Portuguese community Beraha Vesalom. It is not part of the Amsterdam community archives, and belongs to a a separate fund, the Da Costa family papers³.  These letters and documents shed light on different aspects of communication and interaction between diasporic communities, through a great variety of situations :
The 1705 resolution of the London Mahamad ends an episode of intense communication between the Portuguese nations of London and Amsterdam, where a request was sent to the Amsterdam parnassim and Bet din to settle a sharp conflict concerning the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of a sermon preached by Haham David Nieto in 1703. The letters from the Amsterdam parnassim  to Bordeaux and Safed (1728) also deal with religious deviance, in the realm of praxis, and involve actors located in a fascinating triangle, linking Amsterdam, Safed and Bordeaux. In both cases, what is at stake and calls for discussion, is the metropolitan function of the Amsterdam kehillah. As well, these examples point to the existence of networks of halakhic authority, that contribute to the spatial hierarchized organization of  the diaspora.
The letter taken from the copybook of Abraham da Costa (1723) and adressed to the parnassim of the Surinam kehilah, relates the process of hiring a new assistant hazan to be shipped to Surinam, and at the same time refers to mercantile transactions. The 1733 letter from the Amsterdam parnassim to Francisco Pereyra in London combines information about various financial transactions connected with the management of funds belonging or estates entrusted to the Amsterdam parnassim, and a request for intercession on behalf of some Jews from Gibraltar taken by the Spanish. Both these letters allow us to understand the articulation between transnational or intercommunal networks and mercantile networks, through the figure of these merchants or bankers acting as community agents, in a double capacity that involves handling economic affairs of the community and serving as a semi official intermediary in community matters. These two letters illustrate the porosity and the interpenetration of the mercantile, communal and intercommunal spheres.
The letter sent by the Amsterdam parnassim to Ferrara (1753) brings yet an altogether different subject matter, which still relates to networks of information and in this case legal-diplomatic cooperation : informed of the plight of the Pavlitch (Pawolocz) Jews sentenced in may 1753- one of the numerous instances of ritual murder accusations in mid-18th century Poland- the Amsterdam parnassim agree to the request for help, and proceed to collect documents pertaining to the defence of the Jews against such accusations, which is the object of their letter to Ferrara. Several similar letters were sent to other Italian communities, and this process was followed by diplomatic intercession via the States General. If the mission of Jacob Selek to Rome in 1758 and its impact on the relations between the Holy See and Polish Jewry, little attention has been devoted to this earlier episode of intercommunal cooperation. Apart from its broader historical significance, this episode serves a specific purpose in this presentation : it illustrates the distinct but layered networks of information and diplomatic intervention. As well, it allows us to understand through a very concrete example how distinct networks of information interconnect, here Eastern European Ashkenazi and Western European sephardic networks, the locus of the interconnection here being Amsterdam.

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