From Christianity to Judaism: Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro - Couverture rigide

Kaplan, Yosef

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0197100600 ISBN 13 : 9780197100608

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

Translated from the Hebrew, this is a biography of Isaac Orobio de Castro, born Baltazar Alvares, a crypto-Jew from Portugal who was one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the Sephardi Diaspora in the 17th century. After studying medicine and theology in Spain and having pursued a medical career, he was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition for practising Judaism, tortured, tried and imprisoned. He subsequently emigrated to France and became a professor of medicine at Toulouse before openly professing his Judaism and going to Amsterdam in 1662, where he joined the thriving Portuguese Jewish community. Amsterdam was then a city of great cultural creativity and religious pluralism. Here Orobio became a spokesman and apologist for the Jewish community and 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 including Philip Van Limborch. This biography considers the life and the thoughts of Orobio, who became one of the foremost spokesmen of Sephardic Judaism in western Europe at this time.

The text also sheds light on the life of a unique Jewish community of former Christians who had openly turned to Judaism. It focuses on the particular dilemmas of the converts, their attempts to establish boundaries between their Christian past and their new identity and their ability to create new forms of Jewish life and expression.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

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).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 1989
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0197100600
• ISBN 13: 9780197100608
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 601
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie