Samuel Abbas (also known as Samuel ben Isaac Abbas) translated Baḥya Ibn Pakuda’s famous ethical treatise, Ḥovot ha-levavot (Duties of the Heart), into Portuguese as Hobat alebabot Obrigacam dos coracoens livro moral. He also translated from Dutch to Portuguese the work of a young proselyte, Jan Richen (from the city of Hoorn), called Keset Yonatan (Bow of Jonathan. During his life, Abbas amassed an impressive library that included 1,136 books in different languages. He was buried with his wife in the Jewish cemetery of Hamburg/Altona.
The God of Israel is not rich.
I saw the Sistine Chapel,
Notre-Dame, the Cathedral of Cologne—
You can feast your eyes on them, you can enjoy.
The God of Israel is stingy.
He won’t fill his museum…
Menachem Vivante (b. 1650) was a rabbi in Corfu in the eighteenth century and a member of a prominent merchant family. In this oil portrait, painted when he was eighty-five years old, he is depicted…
The latest attempt to salvage poor shipwrecked Judaism in America is on. The Menorah Journal summoned the doughtiest intellectuals to this heroic task. These came highly equipped with trenchant pen…