Menasseh Ben Israel

Menasseh Ben Israel
Engraved portrait by Salomo d'Italia, 1642
Born	1604 Madeira Island, Portugal
Died	1657 Middleburg, Netherlands
Resting place	Ouderkerk a/d Amstel
Occupation	Rabbi
Signature

Manoel Dias Soeiro (1604 – November 20, 1657), better known by his Hebrew name Menasseh ben Israel (מנשה בן ישראל), also, Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael, also known with the Hebrew acronym, MB"Y, was a Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press (named Emeth Meerets Titsma`h) in Amsterdam in 1626.

Life

Menasseh was born on Madeira Island in 1604, with the name Manoel Dias Soeiro, a year after his parents had left mainland Portugal because of the Inquisition. The family moved to the Netherlands in 1610. The Netherlands was in the middle of a process of religious revolt against Catholic Spanish rule throughout the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). The family's arrival in 1610 was during the truce mediated by France and England at The Hague.

Menasseh rose to eminence not only as a rabbi and an author, but also as a printer. He established the first Hebrew press in Holland. One of his earliest works, El Conciliador, won immediate reputation; it was an attempt to reconcile apparent discrepancies in various parts of the Old Testament. Among his correspondents were Gerhard Johann Vossius, Hugo Grotius, António Vieira and Pierre Daniel Huet. In 1638, he decided to settle in Brazil, as he still found it difficult to provide for his wife and family in Amsterdam. He may have visited the Dutch colony's capital of Recife, but did not move there. One of the reasons his financial situation improved in Amsterdam was the arrival of two Portuguese Jewish entrepreneurs, the brothers Abraham and Isaac Pereyra. They hired Rabbi Manasseh to direct a small college or academy (a yeshibah in Spanish-Portuguese parlance of the time) they had founded in the city.

Portrait of Menasseh Ben Israel by Rembrandt

In 1644, Menasseh met Antonio de Montezinos, a Portuguese traveler and Marrano Sephardic Jew who had been in the New World. Montezinos convinced him of his conclusion that the South America Andes' Indians were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. This purported discovery gave a new impulse to Menasseh's Messianic hopes, as the settlement of Jews throughout the world was supposed to be a sign that the Messiah would come. Filled with this idea, he turned his attention to England, whence the Jews had been expelled since 1290. He worked to get them permission to settle there again and thus hasten the Messiah's coming.

He found much Christian support in England to readmit the Jews as 1666 approached. During the Commonwealth, the question of the readmission of the Jews was often mooted under the growing desire for religious liberty. Besides this, Messianic and other mystic hopes were current in England. He first published his book, the Hope of Israel, in Amsterdam in Hebrew (Mikveh Israel) or in Latin (Spes Israelis). In 1650, it was translated into English and published in London; his account of descendants of the Lost Tribes being found in the New World deeply impressed public opinion.

Oliver Cromwell was sympathetic to the Jewish cause, partly because of his tolerant leanings but chiefly because he foresaw the importance for English commerce of the participation of the Jewish merchant princes, some of whom had already made their way to London. At this juncture, the English gave Jews full rights in the colony of Surinam, which they had controlled since 1650. There is some debate among historians, particularly Jewish theologian Ismar Schorsch, concerning whether or not Menasseh’s personal motives for pursuing the readmission of the Jews by England were primarily political or religious. Schorsch argues that the idea of England being a final place for Jews to inhabit in order to bring about the coming of the Messiah was hardly present in Hope of Israel, but rather was developed by Menasseh later in order to appeal to English Christians with Millenarian beliefs.

Menasseh's grave in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel

In 1655, Menasseh arrived in London. During his absence from the Netherlands, the Amsterdam rabbis excommunicated his student, Baruch Spinoza. In London, Menasseh published his Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector, but its effect was weakened by William Prynne's publication of Short Demurrer. Cromwell summoned the Whitehall Conference in December of the same year.

Some of the most notable statesmen, lawyers, and theologians of the day were summoned to this conference to discuss whether the Jews should be readmitted to England. The chief practical result was the declaration of judges Glynne and Steele that "there was no law which forbade the Jews' return to England." Though nothing was done to regularize the position of the Jews, the door was opened to their gradual return. On December 14, 1655, John Evelyn entered in his Diary, "Now were the Jews admitted." When Prynne and others attacked the Jews, Menasseh wrote his major work, Vindiciae judaeorum (1656), in response.

Soon after Menasseh left London, Cromwell granted him a pension, but he died before enjoying it, at Middelburg in the Netherlands in the winter of 1657 (14 Kislev 5418). He was conveying the body of his son Samuel home for burial. His tomb is in the Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel.

Writings

De Resurrectione Mortuorum by Menassah Ben Israel

Menasseh ben Israel was the author of many works. His major work Nishmat Hayim is a treatise in Hebrew on the Jewish concept of reincarnation of souls, published by his son Samuel six years before they both died. Some scholars think that he studied kabbalah with Abraham Cohen de Herrera, a disciple of Israel Saruk. This would explain his familiarity with the method of Isaac Luria.

His other works include:

• De termino vitae written in Latin 1639, translated into English by Thomas Pocock (London, 1709)
• Conciliator translated by Elias Haim Lindo
• De Creatione Problemata, in Spanish, Amsterdam 1635.
• De Resurrectione Mortuorum, Book III 1636 - written originally in Spanish but later translated into Latin, 1636
• De la Fragilidad Humana (On Human Frailty) (1642)
• Nishmat Hayyim Hebrew
• a ritual compendium Thesouros dos dinim.
• Piedra gloriosa - with four engraved etchings by his friend Rembrandt, who also painted his portrait. These are preserved in the British Museum.
• Vindiciae Judaeorum, Or, A Letter in Answer to Certain Questions Propounded by a Nobel and Learned Gentleman: Touching the Reproaches Cast on the Nation of the Jews ; Wherein All Objections are Candidly, and Yet Fully Clear'd. Amsterdam 1656.

Other works can be found in the Biblioteca Nacional – Rio de Janeiro/Brazil per example:

• Orden de las oraciones del mes, con lo mes necessario y obligatorio de las tres fiestas del año. Como tambien lo que toca a los ayunos, Hanucah, y Purim: con sus advertencias y notas para mas facilidad, y clareza. Industria y despeza de Menasseh ben Israel

Descendants

Menasseh's wife, Rachel, was a granddaughter of the Abarbanel. Menasseh had three children by her. According to family legend, Menasseh's wife was a descendant of King David, and he was proud of his children's Davidic ancestry. Both of Menasseh's sons predeceased their father. Menasseh's eldest son was Samuel Abarbanel Soeiro, also known as Samuel Ben Israel, who worked as a printer and assisted his father with matters in England. He died in 1657. Menasseh's youngest son, Joseph, died at age 20, in 1650, on a disastrous business trip to Poland. Menasseh also had a daughter, Gracia, born 1628, who married Samuel Abarbanel Barboza in 1646, and died in 1690.

Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the American sculptor, in his autobiography claimed to be a descendant of Menasseh Ben Israel. His claim is unconfirmed.

See also

• History of the Jews in England
• History of the Jews in England (1066–1290)
• Edict of Expulsion
• History of the Marranos in England
• Resettlement of the Jews in England
• Jewish Naturalization Act 1753
• Influences on the standing of the Jews in England
• Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom
• History of the Jews in the Netherlands
• Early English Jewish literature
• History of the Jews in Scotland

References

• Méchoulan, Henry; Nahon, Gérard, eds. (1987). Menasseh Ben Israel. The Hope of Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-710054-6.
• Roth, Cecil (1934). A Life of Manasseh Ben Israel, Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America.
• Katz, David S. (1982). Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821885-0.
• Katz, David S. (1994). The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-822912-7.
• Kayserling, Meyer (1861). Menasse ben Israel. Sein Leben und Wirken. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Gesch. der Juden in England. Leipzig: Dsfar Leiner. [English transl. by F. de Sola Mendes, London, 1877.]

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia entry on Menasseh Ben Israel
• Digital collection of books and letters related to Menasseh Ben Israel
• Short biography of Menasseh Ben Israel
• Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)