menasseh ben israel

Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel (1604-1657), Jewish Rabbi, scholar, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in 1626.

Life

Rabbi Menasseh was a friend of Rembrandt. He was born in Madeira in 1604, with the name Manoel Dias Soeiro, a year after his parents had left 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 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. Rabbi Menasseh is particularly known for his letter petitioning Oliver Cromwell and the British Parliament to reverse the decisions of previous rulers and allow Jews to return to England. See History of the Jews in England--Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission. His petition was successful and Jews began to gradually resettle in Britain from then onwards. Eventually, after 200 years, the Jews were so much an integrated part of British society that there was a Jewish Prime Minister: Benjamin Disraeli. Rabbi Menasseh died at Middelburg in the Netherlands in the autumn of 1657, shortly after his return from England.

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