Menasseh Ben Israel
Encyclopedia
Manoel Dias Soeiro better known by his Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 name Menasseh Ben Israel (also, Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael, also known with the Hebrew acronym, MB"Y), was a Portuguese
Spanish and Portuguese Jews
Spanish and Portuguese Jews are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardim who have their main ethnic origins within the Jewish communities of the Iberian peninsula and who shaped communities mainly in Western Europe and the Americas from the late 16th century on...

 rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

, kabbalist
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

, scholar, writer, diplomat, printer
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...

 and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

 (named Emeth Meerets Titsma`h) in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 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
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 because of the Inquisition
Portuguese Inquisition
The Portuguese Inquisition was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III. Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of marriage with Maria of Aragon, but it was only after his death that the Pope...

. The family moved to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 in 1610. The Netherlands was in the middle of a process of religious revolt throughout the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). The family's arrival in 1610 was during the truce mediated by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 at The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

.

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 at reconciliation between apparent discrepancies in various parts of the Old Testament. Among his correspondents were Gerhard Johann Vossius
Gerhard Johann Vossius
thumb|180px|Gerrit Johan VossiusGerrit Janszoon Vos , often known by his Latin name Gerardus Vossius, was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian.-Life:...

, Hugo Grotius
Hugo Grotius
Hugo Grotius , also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law...

, and Pierre Daniel Huet
Pierre Daniel Huet
Pierre Daniel Huet was a French churchman and scholar, editor of the Delphin Classics, founder of the Academie du Physique in Caen and Bishop of Soissons from 1685 to 1689 and afterwards of Avranches.-Life:...

. In 1638, he decided to settle in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, as he still found it difficult to provide for his wife and family in Amsterdam. Even though he may have visited the Dutch colony's capital of Recife
Recife
Recife is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Brazil with 4,136,506 inhabitants, the largest metropolitan area of the North/Northeast Regions, the 5th-largest metropolitan influence area in Brazil, and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco. The population of the city proper...

, he in the end appears to not have moved there. One of the reasons his financial situation improved in Amsterdam was the arrival there in the meantime of the Portuguese Jewish entrepreneurs, the brothers Abraham and Isaac Pereyra
Abraham Israel Pereyra
Abraham Israel Pereyra was a wealthy and prominent Jewish Portuguese merchant, who lived in Amsterdam from circa 1644 to his death in 1699....

. Rabbi Manasseh was then employed by them to direct a small college or academy (in fact a Yeshibah in Spanish Portuguese parlance of the time) they had founded in the city.."

In 1644, Menasseh met Antonio de Montesinos
Antonio de Montezinos
Antonio de Montezinos was a Portuguese traveler and a Marrano Sephardic Jew who in 1644 persuaded Menasseh Ben Israel, a rabbi of Amsterdam, that he had found one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel living in the jungles of the "Quito Province" of Ecuador. This supposed discovery gave a new impulse...

, who convinced him that the South America Andes' Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel
Ten Lost Tribes
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...

. This supposed discovery gave a new impulse to Menasseh's Messianic
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

 hopes. But he was convinced that the Messianic age needed as its certain precursor the settlement of Jews in all parts of the known world. Filled with this idea, he turned his attention to England, whence the Jews had been expelled since 1290. He found much Christian support in England. During the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of England
The Commonwealth of England was the republic which ruled first England, and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660. Between 1653–1659 it was known as the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland...

 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. In 1650, there appeared an English version of the Hope of Israel, a tract which deeply impressed public opinion. Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

 had been moved to sympathy with the Jewish cause partly by his tolerant leanings, but chiefly because he foresaw the importance for English commerce of the presence of the Jewish merchant princes, some of whom had already found their way to London. At this juncture, Jews received full rights in the colony of Surinam, which had been English since 1650.
In 1655, Menasseh arrived in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. During his absence, the Amsterdam rabbis excommunicated his student, Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...

. One of his first acts on reaching London was the issue of his Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector, but its effect was weakened by the issue of William Prynne
William Prynne
William Prynne was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for...

's able, but unfair Short Demurrer. Cromwell summoned the Whitehall Conference
Whitehall Conference
The Whitehall Conference was a gathering of prominent English merchants, clergymen, and lawyers convened by Oliver Cromwell for the purpose of debating whether Jews should be readmitted to England...

 in December of the same year. Some of the most notable statesmen, lawyers, and theologians of the day were summoned to this conference. 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. John Evelyn
John Evelyn
John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...

 was able to enter in his Diary
John Evelyn's Diary
The Diary of John Evelyn, a gentlemanly Royalist and virtuoso of the seventeenth century, was first published in 1818 under the title Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, in an edition by William Bray. Bray was assisted by William Upcott, who had access to the Evelyn family...

under the date Dec. 14, 1655, "Now were the Jews admitted." But the attack on the Jews by Prynne and others could not go unanswered. Menasseh replied in his major work, Vindiciae judaeorum (1656).

Soon after Menasseh left London Cromwell granted him a pension, but he died before he could enjoy it, at Middelburg
Middelburg
Middelburg is a municipality and a city in the south-western Netherlands and the capital of the province of Zeeland. It is situated in the Midden-Zeeland region. It has a population of about 48,000.- History of Middelburg :...

 in the Netherlands in the winter of 1657 (14 Kislev
Kislev
Kislev Kislev Tiberian ; also Chislev is the third month of the civil year and the ninth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar....

5418), as he was conveying the body of his son Samuel home for burial. His tomb is in the Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel
Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel
The Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands. It was purchased for use as a burying ground by the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1614 and is located in the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, in the countryside near Amsterdam.In addition to its age,...

.

Writings

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
Gilgul
Gilgul/Gilgul neshamot/Gilgulei Ha Neshamot describes a Kabbalistic concept of reincarnation. In Hebrew, the word gilgul means "cycle" and neshamot is the plural for "souls." Souls are seen to "cycle" through "lives" or "incarnations", being attached to different human bodies over time...

, published by his son Samuel six years before they both died. Some are of the opinion that he studied kabbalah with Abraham Cohen de Herrera
Abraham Cohen de Herrera
Abraham Cohen de Herrera also known as Alonso Nunez de Herrera or Abraham Irira was a religious philosopher and cabbalist. He is supposed by the historian Heinrich Graetz to have been born in 1570...

, a disciple of Israel Saruk
Israel Sarug
Israel Sarug Ashkenazi was a pupil of Isaac Luria, and devoted himself at the death of his master to the propagation of the latter's kabalistic system, for which he gained many adherents in various parts of Italy...

. This would explain his amazing familiarity with the method of Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria , also called Yitzhak Ben Shlomo Ashkenazi acronym "The Ari" "Ari-Hakadosh", or "Arizal", meaning "The Lion", was a foremost rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Palestine...

.

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
    British Museum
    The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

    .

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. Menasseh's wife was, according to family legend, 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
Moses Jacob Ezekiel
Moses Jacob Ezekiel was an American sculptor who lived and worked in Rome for the majority of his career. In the American Civil War, he was a highly-decorated soldier in the Confederate States Army.-Biography:...

, 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
    The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William I. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times...

  • History of the Jews in England--Jews came to England with the Normans
  • History of the Jews in England--The Expulsion
  • History of the Jews in England--Maranos in England
  • History of the Jews in England--Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission
  • History of the Jews in England--The Jew Bill of 1753
  • History of the Jews in England--Other Influences on the Jewish Standing in the Community
  • History of the Jews in England--The Struggle for Emancipation
  • History of the Jews in the Netherlands
    History of the Jews in the Netherlands
    Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the 16th century and World War II.The area now known as the Netherlands was once part of the Spanish Empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence...

  • Early English Jewish literature
    Early English Jewish literature
    English Jewish Literature:-Effects of restrictions:The increasing degradation of the political status of the Jews in the thirteenth century is paralleled by the scantiness of their literary output as compared with that of the twelfth...

  • History of the Jews in Scotland
    History of the Jews in Scotland
    The earliest date at which Jews arrived in Scotland is not known. It is possible that some arrived, or at least visited, as a result of the Roman Empire's conquest of southern Great Britain, but there is no direct evidence for this...


External links

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