Manasseh Ben Israel
Manasseh ben Israel ( 1604 - 20 November 1657 ), or Menashe ben Yosef ben Yisrael, sometimes abbreviated MB "Y, was a rabbi , Kabbalist , writer, scholar, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew press house, called Emeth Meerets Titsma `h, at Amsterdam in 1626. He was a friend of Rembrandt.
He was born under the name Manoel Dias Soeiro to Madeira in 1604 , a year after his parents, conversos for three generations, had been forced to leave Portugal. Briefly passing through La Rochelle before arriving in Amsterdam, where his parents "drop the mask", Manuel Dias Soeiro is high in Judaism, and in 1610 became a pupil of Isaac Uziel Sage in fresh yeshivah Amsterdam. Well versed in science as in the secular Jewish tradition, is taking a passion for printing, he wrote many books responding to criticism from within and outside of Judaism, and Maimonides defends the articles of faith such as the resurrection of the dead or the nature and the divine origin of the soul in its Nishmat Chaim.
Affected by the ideas of Isaac The Peyrre , a Kabbalist converso , he is convinced of the imminent coming of the Messiah , including taking very seriously the Davidic descent of Abravanel , which is relative.
However, the Messiah will come only when the Jews will inhabit all the world, and it turns out that England has been closed since their expulsion in the reign of Edward I of England in 1290, or 350 years earlier.
He goes to England to convince Cromwell , writing for the occasion a Jewish Apology, where he illustrates the many cases where, for Antipater (Prince Idumean converted at the time of the Hasmonean and having plotted to bring Rome Judea) to Juan Mendes Hanassi (a former converso became Duke of Naxos ), the Jews were useful to the princes. In addition, Jews are without a country, they enrich their new homeland.
Although Cromwell was favorably impressed by the more or less discrete conversos settled in England, Manasseh ben Israel returned empty-handed from his mission and die broke. However, his speech provokes the Netherlands a policy of rapid integration of the Jews, and in 1656, Cromwell accepts de facto the crypto-Jews in its territory.
150 years later, the dream of Manasseh ben Israel was realized. He is the author of Esperenza of Israel in 1650 and Piedra gloriosa o estatua of the Nachuchadnesar in 1655.
The Hope of Israel addresses the issue of the Messiah and is very successful in Angelerre: it seeks to refute the idea that Indians are from the ten lost tribes of Israel. English Protestants accredit this story, considering themselves to themselves as a second Israel. Without yielding to these theses Protestant Menasse ben Israel still think that the coming of the Messiah is coming soon. Witness the events that punctuate his time: the catastrophic prophecies announce the completion of consoling prophecies.
Stone glorious, published in 1655, is dedicated to Isaac Vossius. It speaks of the prophecy of Daniel, especially the image of the four empires developed in the 7th chapter of Daniel. The question is, what is the fifth empire, supposed to replace the first four, namely, the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Menasse rejects the idea that this is the fifth empire is Christian, but advocates the idea that these are Jews. He manages not to alienate the Christian world and refuses - unlike Abravanel - to see the Pope in sign of the devil (the tenth horn), but assign that role to the Ottoman Empire. Other prophets of the Old Testament are also discussed in this book.
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