Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld was born and bred in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and studied Modern History at the University of Amsterdam and Jewish Studies at Brandeis University (USA) and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she finished her Ph.D. She is an independent scholar in Amsterdam, involved in several research projects and guiding M.A. and Ph.D. students in the Netherlands and abroad. She is specialized in European Jewish history of the early modern period, concentrating in particular on social aspects of the Sephardi community of early modern Amsterdam. Her book Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews of Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman 2012) won in the United States, the National Jewish Book Award of 2012 in the category of Sephardi Culture.