הרב מנשה בן ישראל

Rav Menasseh ben Israel (5364/1604–14 Kislev 5418/1657) was a rav and darshan in Amsterdam and the founder of the first Hebrew printing press in that city. He was born Manoel Dias Soeiro to a family of anusim who fled the Inquisition of Portugal, reaching Amsterdam in his childhood. There he learned under Chacham Yitzchak Uziel of Fez, rav of the Neveh Shalom kehillah, and his gifts showed early: at fifteen he was darshening publicly, at seventeen he wrote his first sefer, Safah Berurah, and at eighteen, when his rebbi was niftar in 1622, he was appointed to lead Neveh Shalom in his place. He married Rachel, of the family of the Abarbanel.

To support his household he founded the Hebrew press from which Amsterdam grew into one of the centers of Jewish printing in the golah. He knew ten languages and published sefarim in five of them. His El Conciliador, issued in three parts from 1632, resolves hundreds of pesukim in Tanach that seem to contradict one another; written for the anusim returning to Torah and studied closely by the scholars of the nations, it made his name across Europe. In Hebrew he wrote Nishmat Chaim, on the neshamah and gilgul; among his other works are Mikveh Yisrael, the Hope of Israel, and a Portuguese compendium of dinim for the returning anusim. From 1644 he also headed a yeshiva supported by the brothers Abraham and Yitzchak Pereyra.

The Jews had been driven from England in 1290, and Rav Menasseh labored for their return. In 1655 he traveled at the head of a delegation to London — his son Shmuel and Rav Yaakov Sasportas among his companions — at the invitation of Oliver Cromwell; at the Whitehall Conference that December the judges declared that no law of England forbade the Jews’ return, and though no written charter was granted him, the way was opened for Jews to settle there again. He saw in the mission the words of Yeshayahu about the far-off islands that had not yet heard of Hashem; against the pamphlets printed there against Israel he wrote his defense Vindiciae Judaeorum, Teshuat Yisrael, translated in later generations into many languages.

His son Shmuel was niftar in England in 1657, and Rav Menasseh, keeping the oath his son had drawn from him, set out to bring the body home to burial; he reached Middelburg in Holland, fell ill, and was niftar there on 14 Kislev 5418/1657. He rests in the Beit Chaim of Ouderkerk near Amsterdam, where his matzeivah stands whole to this day; within a few years of his passing the kehillah of London received official protection.