Historian
Jonathan Israel wrote that in the seventeenth century, "the new Hamburg synagogue, a place of worship for some eight hundred Sephardi Jews, was filled with emblems and reminders of the Curiel family. The eternal lamp, the Ner Tamid, was provided by
Jacob Curiel, as was the oil for keeping the lamp burning. And also the bimah that stood at the centre of the synagogue, the shelves which lined it being reserved for the use of Jacob and his family."[10]
Amsterdam
Israel wrote that
Moses Curiel of
Amsterdam was "renowned for his wealth, the prestige he enjoyed among non-Jews (the
Stadholder William III stayed at his house for three days during one of his later visits to Amsterdam), and his handsome donations to the Amsterdam
Portuguese Synagogue, his name figured constantly in Dutch Jewish community life and synagogue politics for over half a century." He continues: "his opulent residence on the
Nieuwe Herengracht, then called the Joden Herengracht, in Amsterdam, testified to the seigneurial grandeur of his life-style and his pretensions to leadership among the Portuguese Jewish 'nation' as the community was known in Holland."[11]
Israel noted that
Nathan Curiel possessed a 'medieval illuminated Hebrew Bible of expectational beauty' which his father,
Moses Curiel, had purchased from a Spanish Jew from North Africa. According to Israel, this Bible is considered 'the oldest and most venerable item possessed by Dutch Jewry.'[12]
I. Da Costa, Noble Families Among the Sephardi Jews, (Gordon Press Publishers, 1976),
ISBN0849023491
Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-century Amsterdam, (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004),
ISBN1904113125
Jonathan Israel, Conflicts of Empires: Spain, the Low Countries and the Struggle for World Supremacy, 1585-1713, (A&C Black, 1997)
Israel, Lopo Ramirez (David Curiel) and the Attempt to Establish a Sephardi Community in Antwerp in 1653-1654, (Peeters Publishers, 1994)