Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first book to offer a translation into English-as well as a critical study-of a Spanish treatise written around 1650 by Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira, whose most renowned congregant was Baruch Spinoza. Aimed at encouraging the practice of halachic Judaism among the Amsterdam-based descendants of conversos, Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity, the book stages a dialogue between two conversos that ultimately leads to a vision of a Jewish homeland-an outcome that Morteira thought was only possible through his program for rejudaisation.
Trade Review"Kaplan’s translation is a pleasure to read and it succeeds in bringing out the literary quality of Morteira’s work. ... This is an edition and translation; it is not an attempt to deliver an intellectual biography of Morteira. Nevertheless, Kaplan’s rendering of the Amsterdam’s rabbi’s Arguments will turn out to be an invaluable source to anyone willing and able to write such a biography." - Wiep van Bunge,
Renaissance Quarterly, Winter 2019 "This book makes a significant contribution to a better understanding of the life of early modern Jewish communities, particularly but not exclusively in Amsterdam, against the background of the socio-cultural relations, and of the tensions, between different components of early modern Jewry." - Diego Lucci, American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad in the
Journal of Ecclesiastical HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Arguments Against the Christian Religion in Amsterdam (ms. EH/LM 48D38 [Fuks 206]) Index of Direct and Indirect Biblical Quotations in Arguments Works Cited
