Born to converso parents and baptized as Manoel Dias Soeiro, Menasseh Ben
Israel moved as a boy with his family to Amsterdam, where
they reverted openly to Judaism. In 1626, he established the first Hebrew
printing shop in the Dutch capital. In his writings, he emphasized that the
eternal life of the soul was assured to all the righteous of the nations. In
1650, he published his Miqveh Israel, esto es Esperança
de Israel (The Hope of Israel) in several languages. In addition to his own writing and printing business, Menasseh Ben Israel was the third most important of the four ḥakhamim (rabbis) of the Sephardic congregation and was a gifted preacher. He was an interlocutor of Christian intellectuals on behalf of the Jewish community. Menasseh Ben Israel attended the 1655 Whitehall Conference convened by Oliver Cromwell and negotiated (unsuccessfully) with British leaders to obtain written permission for Jewish resettlement in England, following their expulsion in 1290.