third, Beth Israel, founded in 1618. They were all Sephardic. They were all hidden and therefore not visible from the streets. But the Jews were not alone in the Jodenbuurt. They were joined by several Christians. One of them was the artist Rembrandt, who was fascinated by the "Biblical" faces of his new neighbors. In 1641, a group of Franciscans also came to establish a Catholic clandestine church in a house called "Moses", out of the reach of the Protestant authorities of Amsterdam. Known as the "Jewish Church", it began as the Sint-Anthoniuskerk [ "St. Anthony of Padua Church" ] but it grew into the Mozes en Aäronkerk [ "Moses and Aaron Church" ]. It is still standing today at the Waterlooplein. On 8 November 1616, the Jews were made legal citizens by the City of Amsterdam. But they were still not allowed to enter certain occupations; they were not permitted by the guilds of Amsterdam. So they were limited to street trading, financing, book printing and diamond cutting — the only occupations that were open to them. From 1622, the synagogues began to cooperate for the good of the Jodenbuurt. On 3 April 1693, they merged their districts into a single municipality under the name of Talmud Torah. In that year, they also opened the first synagogue that was visible from the streets. It stood on the Houtgracht, at the present Waterlooplein. Next to the new synagogue on Nieuwe Amstelstraat [ "New Amstel Street" ] was a meat market, where the residents of the neighborhood could buy their kosher meat. The Sephardi did not have proper knowledge about Judaism. They were not allowed to be Jews in Portugal and Spain but they were allowed to live as the so-called Marranos or fake Christians. So in Amsterdam they sent for the rabbis to come out of Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to teach them the ways of Judaism in the Jodenbuurt. The first Ashkenazi shul, the Great Synagogue ( now the Jewish Historical Museum ), and the fifth Sephardi shul, the Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue, were opened in 1671 and 1675, respectively, immortalized by the engravings of the Dutchman, Romeyn de Hooghe ( 1645–1708 ). The Portuguese Synagogue was the place where Spinoza was placed under the ban by the Sephardic Jewish community in 1656. Because of their knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, many of the Sephardim were involved with