Menasse ben Israel

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Engraving from Salom Italia , 1642

Menasse ben Israel (born 1604 in Lisbon or La Rochelle ; died November 20, 1657 in Middelburg , Netherlands ) was a Sephardic Jew , scholar , diplomat , writer , Kabbalist , printer and publisher . It is also known by the Hebrew acronym MB "Y ".

Life

Menasse ben Israel was born in 1604 in Lisbon or La Rochelle as the son of Marran Gaspar Rodrigues Nunes. His baptismal name was Manoel Dias Soeiro . Assumptions that he was born in Madeira could not be proven. His parents were persecuted by the Inquisition and left Portugal after their father had to appear repentant at a car dairy. In 1613 or 1614 the family settled in Amsterdam and returned to Judaism .

Early years

The young Menasse started a successful apprenticeship. As a member of the Santa Irmandade Talmud Torah of Amsterdam , he attended the yeshiva from the age of 14. His teacher was Rabbi Isaac Uziel from Morocco . At the age of fifteen he said he gave his first sermon in Portuguese; at seventeen he wrote his first book, a Hebrew grammar . When his teacher died in 1622, Menasse ben Israel is said to have been appointed as his successor as preacher of the Neve Shalom congregation . The official appointment as Predicator (preacher) was not made until 1628. In 1622 he is also mentioned as Ribi (teacher) of the Talmud Torah community. His parents died that same year.

The following year, 19-year-old Menasse married 21-year-old Rachel Abarbanel, who traced her ancestry back to the well-known Spanish-Jewish family of the Abrabanel . Together they had three children, daughter Gracia (Hannah) and two sons Joseph and Samuel.

Printer and author

De Creatione Problemata XXX, title page 1635

In addition to his position as a teacher, Menasse worked as a bookseller and from 1626 as a printer. He founded the first Hebrew printing company in Amsterdam ( Emeth Meerets Tisma`h ). The first book, a Hebrew prayer book, left the printing press in January 1627. With the establishment of this printing house, Amsterdam developed into the most important Hebrew printing center in Europe. Menasse published and printed books in Hebrew , Yiddish , Latin , Spanish , Portuguese and some in Dutch and English . In total, around 80 titles left his printing house. His prints were mostly financed by his friend Ephraim Bueno or his brother-in-law Jonas Abarbanel .

In 1628 Menasse published the Sefer Selim and the Mayan Gannim of his friend and eminent Jewish scholar Joseph Solomon Delmedigo . These works with both religious and scientific content and with numerous mathematical illustrations caused quite a stir and were controversial in the Sephardic community. For some chapters, the Parnassim even prohibited printing.

In 1632 the first part of the work Conciliador, written by him, appeared ( Conciliador o de la conveniencia de los Lugares de la S. Escriptura que repugnantes entre si parecen ), in which contradictions and inconsistencies in biblical passages were balanced out (Spanish conciliar = to reconcile) should be. The book, which was primarily aimed at the former Conversos in order to remove their uncertainties in matters of faith, received a great deal of attention outside the Jewish community as well. As early as 1634 it was translated into Latin by Dionysius Vossius , the son of the well-known Amsterdam scholar Gerhard Vossius . The Concilador , of which three further volumes appeared between 1641 and 1650, made Menasse known in humanist circles all over Europe. After this success he wrote a number of other writings that were also of interest to non-Jews ( De Creatione Problemata , 1635; De Termino Vitae , 1634; De Resurrectione Mortuorum 1636; De Fragilitate Humana , 1642). De Resurrectione Mortuorum was put on the index in 1656 by the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith .

Menasse managed the printing company until 1642. Later it passed into the hands of his two sons. The last work that appeared in his print shop was an open letter to Oliver Cromwell ( To his highnesse the Lord Protector , 1651).

Relationships

Etching by Rembrandt, 1636

Although Menasse was held in high regard in parts of the Sephardic community and was supported by the affluent families of the Buoenos, Abravanels, Pintos, Abudientes and other affluent families, he mostly suffered from tight financial circumstances. It was not undisputed within the community. He clearly opposed Jewish free spirits such as Uriel da Costa , Juan de Prado and his former student Spinoza and responded in several books to their attack on the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul ( De Resurrectione Mortuorum , 1636). Against the orthodox rabbis he had to defend himself because of his proximity to the Karaites . His relationship with his former classmate Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca had been clouded since he published the main work Sefer Elim by Joseph Salomo Delmedigo in his printing house in 1629.

The fact that Menasse was also highly regarded in the non-Jewish world is already evident in his relationship with the painter Rembrandt van Rijn , who lived in the same quarter of Amsterdam. Rembrandt immortalized him in a portrait in 1636 and created four etchings for the book Piedra gloriosa . His relationship to the non-Jewish scholarly world is expressed in his rich correspondence. He corresponded with well-known scholars such as Gerhard Johannes Vossius and his sons Isaac and Dionysius Vossius, with Grotius , Salmasius , Christian Ravis, Jan van Beverwijck, Simon Episcopius , Barlaeus , Petrus Cunaeus, David Blondel , Anna Maria von Schürmann , Pierre Daniel Huet and others more. This correspondence began especially after the publication of the Consiliador . His messianic publications brought him in contact with António Vieira , Paul Felgenhauer , Isaac de La Peyrère , John Dury , Nathaniel Holmes, Henry Jessey, Henry More and other Puritans of England.

Although Menasse performed various functions in the Amsterdam community, he was never its chief rabbi. When the three Jewish communities were united in 1639, he felt that he was being left out as the third rabbi. In 1640 he was put with the Herem for one day by the Parnassim because of disputes and suspended as a preacher for a year. This and the ongoing financial bottlenecks prompted him to plan a trip to Dutch Brazil . It was not until 1642 that he was appointed head of the yeshiva founded by Abraham and Isaac Pereira that made him give up his plans to emigrate.

Mission in England

Menasse ben Israel's tomb

When after the Puritan Revolution of 1649 philosemitic forces demanded the return of the Jews who had been expelled from England since 1290, Menasse became a prominent negotiating partner. Jewish messianism and English millenarianism had some points of contact. After the alleged discovery of the ten lost tribes of Israel by the Marran traveler Antonio de Montezinos , another end-time condition was to be met with the re-admission of the Jews to England. In 1650 Menasse dedicated the Latin version of Hope Israel , which contained the story of Montezino, to the English Parliament. For political and health reasons he left the negotiations to his friend David Abravanel and his son Samuel Soeiro for the time being and in 1651 wrote an open letter to the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland Oliver Cromwell.
In 1655 he went to England personally and met with various personalities. He had the opportunity to explain to Cromwell the reasons for the Jews to return to England. At the Whitehall Conference called by Cromwell in December 1655, no agreement was reached on resettlement. After all, permission was granted for a synagogue and a cemetery. During his stay in England Menasse wrote the Vindicae Judaeorum , a defense against the attacks to which he was exposed.
Although Cromwell provided him with an annual pension of £ 100, he returned to Holland in the autumn of 1657, deeply disappointed. He died soon after his arrival in Middelburg. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Beth Haim (Ouderkerk aan de Amstel) , where his grave can still be visited today.

Works (selection)

  • Peney Rabah . Amsterdam 1628. online
  • Conciliador or de la conveniencia de los lugares . Amsterdam 1632. online
  • De Creatione Problemata XXX . Amsterdam 1635. online
  • De Resurrectione Mortuorum . Amsterdam 1636. online
  • Calendario de las fiestas: y ayunos, que los Hebreos celebran cada año . Amsterdam 1636. online
  • Thesouro dos Dinim, que o povo de Israel he obrigado saber e observar . Amsterdam 1645-1647. on-line
  • Esto es, Esperança de Israel . Amsterdam 1650 (English Hope of Israel . London 1650). on-line
  • Nishmat Hayim . Amsterdam 1651. online
  • To his highnesse the Lord Protector of the Common-wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland . Amsterdam 1651. online
  • Piedra gloriosa or de la estatua de Nebuchadnesar . Amsterdam 1655. online
  • Vindiciae judaeorum . Amsterdam 1656. ( The rescue of the Jews , translated from English by Moses Mendelssohn , Berlin 1782.)

Literature (selection)

Non-fiction, specialist books:

  • Sina Rauschenbach : cultural mediator "in the wrong direction" . in Ottmar Ette (ed.): Forms of knowledge and norms of knowledge of living together: Literature - Culture - History - Media . Walter de Gruyter, 2012. pp. 103–127.
  • Sina Rauschenbach: Judaism for Christians. Mediation and Assertion of Menasseh Ben Israel in the learned debates of the 17th century . Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.
  • JH Coppenhagen: Menasseh Ben Israel. Manuel Dias Soerio 1604–1657. A Bibliography. = Menaše ben Yiśrāʾēl. Misgav Yerushalayim, Jerusalem 1990, ISBN 965-296-014-4 ( Misgav Yerushalayim. Bibliographical Series 2).
  • Richard Popkin , Yosef Ed. Kaplan, Henry Ed. Méchoulan (Ed.): Menasseh ben Israel and his World. Conference. Papers. Brill, Leiden 1989, ISBN 90-04-09114-9 ( Brills Studies in intellectual History 15).
  • Henri Méchoulan, Gérard Nahon (ed.): Menasseh ben Israel. Espérance d'Israël. J. Vrin, Paris 1979 ( Bibliothèque d'histoire de la philosophie. ISSN  0249-7980 ).
  • Cecil Roth : A Life of Menasseh ben Israel, Rabbi, Printer and Diplomat. Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia PA 1934, (Reprint. Arno Press, New York NY 1975, ISBN 0-405-06743-7 ( The Modern Jewish Experience )).
  • Lucien Wolf (Ed.): Menasseh Ben Israel's mission of Oliver Cromwell. Being a reprint of the pamphlets published by Menasseh Ben Israel to promote the Re-admission of the Jews to England 1649–1656. With an introduction and notes. Macmillan & Co., London 1901
  • Cecil Roth , AK Offenberg:  Manasseh (Menasseh) Ben Israel. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 13, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865941-1 , pp. 454-455 (English).
  • Meyer Kayserling : Menasse ben Israel. His life and work. At the same time a contribution to the history of the Jews in England. Illustrated from the sources. Springer, Berlin 1861.

Fiction:

  • Robert Menasse : The Expulsion from Hell . Novel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-41267-1 .
  • Berthold Auerbach: Benedictus de Spinoza's Complete Works - From Latin with the life of Spinoza’s , J. Scheible's Buchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1841, Volume I, p. XX

Web links

Commons : Menasseh Ben Israel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Roth, Offenberg. 2007.
  2. ^ Herman Prins Salomon: The Portuguese Background of Menasseh Ben Israels Parents as Revealed Through the. Inquisitorial Archives at Lisbon . In: Studia Rosenthaliana , 17, (1983), pp. 105-147.
  3. ↑ The grammar Safah beroerah remained unpublished.
  4. ↑ Laib Fuks: Hebrew typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585-1815 . Leiden 1984.
  5. ↑ Mechoulan, Nahon. 1979, p. 40 f.
  6. ↑ Menasseh ben Joseph ben Israel. In: Jesús Martínez de Bujanda , Marcella Richter: Index des livres interdits: Index librorum prohibitorum 1600–1966. Médiaspaul, Montréal 2002, ISBN 2-89420-522-8 , p. 608 (French, digitized ).
  7. ↑ Michael Zell: Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian image in seventeenth-century Amsterdam . Berkeley 2002. ISBN 978-0-520-22741-5 .
  8. ↑ See Henry Méchoulan: Menasseh ben Israel and the World of the Non-Jew and David S. Katz: Menasseh ben Israel's Christian Connection . In: Menasseh ben Israel and his World . Leiden 1989.
  9. ^ Yosef Kaplan: An alternative path to modernity. The Sephardi diaspora in western Europe . Leiden 2000, ISBN 90-04-11742-3 , pp. 119 f.
  10. ^ David S. Katz: The Jews in the history of England, 1485-1850 . Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-19-820667-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Menasse ben Israel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Manoel Dias Soeiro; MB "Y
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese-Dutch rabbi, diplomat, writer and scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 1604
PLACE OF BIRTH Lisbon or La Rochelle
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1657
Place of death Middelburg , Netherlands