Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, once a curator at the Jewish Museum of Amsterdam and now an independent scholar, lives and works in Amsterdam. She received her PhD in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She specializes in European Jewish History of the Early Modern Period, concentrating in particular on social and cultural aspects of the Sephardi community of Early Modern Amsterdam. Her book Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews of Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford 2012) won the (American) National Jewish Book Award of 2012 in the category of Sephardi Culture.