From Christianity to Judaism: Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization) - Hardcover

Kaplan, Yosef

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0197100600 ISBN 13: 9780197100608

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

Isaac Orobio de Castro, a crypto-Jew from Portugal, was one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the Sephardi Diaspora in the seventeenth century. After studying medicine and theology in Spain, and having pursued a distinguished medical career, he was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition for practising Judaism, tortured, tired, and imprisoned. He subsequently emigrated to France and became a professor of medicine at the University of Toulouse before openly professing his Judaism and going to Amsterdam where he joined the thriving Portuguese Jewish community. Amsterdam was then a city of great cultural creativity and religious pluralism where Orobio found open to him the world of religious thinkers and learned scholars. In this atmosphere he flourished and became an outstanding spokesman and apologist for the Jewish community. He engaged in controversy with Juan de Prado and Baruch Spinoza, who were both excommunicated by the Portuguese Jewish community, as well as with Christian theologians of various sects and denominations, including Philip van Limborch.

This fascinating biography of Orobio sheds light on the complex life of a unique Jewish community of former Christians who had openly returned to Judaism. It focuses on the particular dilemmas of the converts, their attempts to establish boundaries between their Christian past and their new identity, their internal conflicts, and their ability to create new forms of Jewish life and expression.

About this title

About the Author

Yosef Kaplan is Bernard Cherrick Professor of Medieval and Modern Jewish History and Director of the School of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published extensively on early modern Jewish history and on the western Sephardi diaspora; his most recent book is An Alternative Path to Modernity (2000).

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0197100600
• ISBN 13: 9780197100608
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 601