Manasseh ben Israel

Manasseh Ben Israel was a Jewish scholar, printer and diplomat active in Amsterdam. He was born in Lisbon or La Rochelle, and settled in Amsterdam in 1614 where his family had fled from the Inquisition.

Manasseh’s showed interest for education and remarkable results from an early age; he became a member of the Ḥevrah for Talmud Torah at the age of 12, began to frequent the yeshivot when he was 14, made his first public oration in Portuguese when he was 15, and at 17 wrote his first book, Safah Berurah, a grammatical work. He founded the earliest Jewish Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in 1626, where he published works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English for the remainder of his life. The first book of his press, a Hebrew Sephardi prayer book, appeared on January 1, 1627. All in all his pres published about 80 titles.

Manasseh had a prominent share in the negotiations on the return of the Jews to England. He entered into discussions with various Englishmen by correspondence and in person, on the possibility of permitting the return of the Jews. In 1650 he dedicated the Latin edition of his work, The Hope of Israel, to the English parliament in an effort to solicit their goodwill. In 1655 he went to England and submitted his petition to Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews. Though he had not succeeded in obtaining formal permission for the resettlement of the Jews in England, he brought the subject prominently before the ruling minds of England, and thus indirectly led to the recognition of the fact that there was nothing in English law against the readmission.