Uri ha-Levi

Born in Amsterdam, Uri ben Aaron ha-Levi was the grandson of a founder of the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam; Uri’s father was the ḥazan of the Neveh Shalom congregation there. Uri ha-Levi (also known as Witzenhausen) was a member of the Sephardic congregation and governor of the charitable Honen Dalim society in 1683/4; he also had numerous connections among the Ashkenazi community. He established a press that printed Hebrew and Yiddish religious and rabbinic works between 1658 and 1689, including the first full Yiddish translation of the Bible. Ha-Levi also printed the first Yiddish newspaper (Dinstagishe un Freytagishe Kuranten), which appeared on Tuesdays and Fridays. After receiving an invitation from the Polish king to establish a Hebrew press in Poland, he and his family settled in Żółkiew in 1692. In 1705, he returned to Amsterdam, where he composed a short work describing the first Portuguese Jews to settle in the city, highlighting his grandfather’s role.