Night Kitchen, History Tour, the “Miracle of Amsterdam” Portuguese Synagogue, Cookies & Frites

  
Last night we had dinner at Night Kitchen.  This is a restaurant that arrived in Amsterdam after success in Tel Aviv and Berlin, and we ordered “Dinner with Friends,” which means we put our trust in the bartender’s recommendations.  He chose small samplings of items from the menu for us — tuna sashimi, sourdough bread, pink trout with polenta, scallops, steak, asparagus, tomato salad and raspberry tart — in addition to a few fiery ginger lemon vodka shots.  The food was fantastic and the restaurant is charming.

This morning, after a brief discussion about the COBRA art movement (which thrived in Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam for a short time in the 1950s), we headed out with a guide on a history tour.  Our walk took us through the areas of Amsterdam we might have missed, as some of the oldest sites sit surrounded by the most commercial modern-day businesses.  On either side of the 1581 entrance to a former church and monastery and orphanage, there was a Kiehl’s store and Timberland boots.  The entryway shows boys in their uniforms from the orphanage.  But even more amazing is that this site, which now also includes “The Amsterdam Dungeon,” a torture entertainment site, is where the Miracle of  Amsterdam took place.

  Back in 1345, a dying man was visited by a priest, who administered last rites and gave him a wafer.  He felt ill, and vomited.  A servant threw the vomit into the fire to burn it and

then the family went to bed.  In the morning, they were stunned to see that the wafer emerged from the fire unscathed.  It was a miracle.  They brought the wafer to the church and when they got home, the wafer was back in the house.  Three times they tried, yet the wafer kept appearing at the house.  There’s a sign on the building side that tells this story (and also the hours for the Amsterdam Dungeon, in case you want to go there).

We saw Dam Square, the original buildings of the Dutch East India Company, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the University of Amsterdam.  We walked through the famous Red Light district.  It was not the “pretty” side of Amsterdam like where our hotel is.  Side note from yesterday:  when something in Amsterdam costs a lot of money, it’s described as “pepper expensive,” a reference to the incredible prices paid for spices back in the days of the Dutch East India Company.

Sign at a druggist’s shop 

We then headed to see the Portuguese Synagogue, founded in 1639.  It is huge and beautiful and its story connected to what I learned last year when I spent 2 months in Portugal as well as the establishment of the 1735 synagogue in Savannah, Georgia that Claudia had been to a few years ago.

 Jews of the Iberian peninsula, forced to convert to Catholicism or face death from the Inquisition, came to Amsterdam to convert back to Judaism and restart their traditions (their descendents also made it to Georgia where they started the historic Savannah synagogue) .  There were many smaller synagogues in the Jewish quarter of the city, but the Portuguese Synagogue is the largest.  It’s lit only by windows and candlelight and its surrounding buildings include a library with ancient texts and scrolls from Maimonides.

 The Jewish quarter survived until World War II, and the golden plaques are interspersed in the brick sidewalks where a Jewish family lived but did not survive the Holocaust.

There’s a new Holocaust museum under construction and nearby a museum of the Resistance.  Maybe for a future visit.   It was striking to learn more today about the waves of religious tolerance and intolerance in Amsterdam’s history.  After the 80 years war ended Spanish rule in 1572, Catholics in Amsterdam were forced to create hidden tunnels to allow them to access secret churches where they could pray.  And so it goes.

As we walked back to the hotel (3 hours after setting out!) we realized, with one full day left in Amsterdam, we had to eat fries in a cone and get the viral sensation Van Stapele cookies. Both “best of” places were close to the hotel so Claudia took her shoes off to rest and I went out in the rain with an umbrella to wait in the cookie line.  I can report that the frites from Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx and the Van Stapele chocolate cookies with white chocolate filling were both excellent.