יצחק אבוהב דה-פונסיקה

Rav Yitzchak Aboab da Fonseca (13 Shevat 5365/1605–27 Adar II 5453/1693) was a rav of Amsterdam, a darshan, a mekubal and a translator of kabbalistic works into Hebrew — and the first appointed rav in the New World. He was born in Castro Daire in Portugal into a family of anusim, and at seven fled with his mother to Holland, where the family returned openly to Yiddishkeit. In Amsterdam he learned under Rav Yitzchak Uziel until his rebbi’s passing in 5382/1622, together with Rav Menasheh ben Yisrael. At twenty-one, in 5386/1626, he was appointed chacham of the Beit Yisrael kehillah of Amsterdam — a post ordinarily given to older men — and after the Sephardic kehillot of the city merged in 5399/1639 he sat as a dayan in the beit din headed by Rav Shaul Morteira.

In 5402/1642 he went out to Recife, then the capital of Dutch Brazil, and was appointed rav of the city and of the Kahal Zur Israel kehillah, which had a beit knesset, a mikveh and a yeshiva — among the first in the Americas — serving there together with Rav Moshe Refael de Aguilar. Its members were largely Portuguese Jews who had first come to Amsterdam fleeing the Inquisition. When the Portuguese retook Recife in 5414/1654 after a nine-year struggle, the Jews fought beside the Dutch army, which refused to surrender until safe passage for them was guaranteed; Rav Yitzchak fled back to Amsterdam with the kehillah, while some of its members sailed on to New Amsterdam in North America and were among those who founded it.

In Amsterdam he was appointed chacham a second time and rosh yeshivat Etz Chaim, and he led the kehillah for some forty years, in which time it flourished. It was a derashah of his in 5431/1671 that set in motion the building of the Portuguese beit knesset of Amsterdam, the Esnoga, inaugurated on 10 Av 5435/1675. He translated from Spanish into Hebrew the sefarim of Rav Avraham Cohen de Herrera, Sha’ar HaShamayim and Beit Elokim (Amsterdam 5415/1655), and together with Rav Moshe Refael Aguilar and Rav Aharon Sarfati he wrote the introduction to a fine edition of the Tanach printed in Amsterdam in his day. He stood openly against the Shabtai Tzvi movement, and he was among the members of the beit din that placed the cherem on Baruch Spinoza.

A machloket in machshavah stood between him and Rav Shaul Morteira: whether a Jew comes in the end to his tikkun and in every case merits Olam Haba, as Rav Yitzchak held, or whether a man can sin until he loses his portion entirely. The exchanges, which touched the anusim and their kehillot closely, were printed from manuscripts preserved in Recife in Chachmei Recife v’Amsterdam (Machon Yerushalayim, 5767/2007), a sefer that carries many of his pesakim as well; his glosses on the Rambam reached us through the correctors of the Amsterdam 5462 printing of the Mishneh Torah. He was niftar in Amsterdam at eighty-eight.