Karaites—a scripturalist Jewish movement that emerged in eighth and ninth-century Palestine, before spreading to centers in the Ottoman Empire, and ultimately into Crimea, Lithuania, and Poland—had few friends and admirers among the rabbinic Jews living in northwest Europe during the seventeenth century. Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, one of Amsterdam’s leading rabbis, made this abundantly clear in his Conciliador, a massive four volume compilation reconciling hundreds upon hundreds of seemingly contradictory biblical verses, published in Amsterdam between 1632–1651. As part of his monumental effort to resolve all apparent biblical discrepancies and inconsistencies, Menasseh considered Exodus 34:27, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel’,”1 and the obvious reality that a substantial corpus of law and teachings in Judaism were oral and thus were excluded, apparently, from this concord. Ruminating on this subject brought Menasseh’s attention to a group in the Jewish past that had responded to this challenge by eschewing any relationship with the Oral Law—the Karaites. Regarding this Jewish movement, Menasseh wrote that “Saadia [Gaon] defeated them [the Karaites] and as a result very few are left who advocate their repugnant view.”2 Speaking disparagingly of the quality and strength of Karaite religious knowledge and doctrines, Menasseh continued, adding that “They who still remain are unable to compose any kind of book, and they are ignorant and outcast by all Jewish communities.”3
Menasseh’s coreligionists in the ex-converso community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, both before his time and afterward, held equally negative views of the Karaite movement—and often went well beyond the level of Menasseh rejectionism. The Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of seventeenth-century northwest Europe was significantly comprised of ex-conversos, descendants of individuals who forcibly, reluctantly, or in some cases enthusiastically converted to Christianity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some of whom later joined Jewish communities in different locations around the European world and the Mediterranean. Within these communities, some skeptical members were uncomfortable with, questioned, or rejected rabbinic authority and literature outright. This led many communal leaders to show an acute sensitivity regarding any antinomian or skeptical sign, and a tendency to see “Karaite” tendencies lurking around the corner and underneath the bed. Isaac Uziel—an early leader of the Amsterdam Jewish community—encountered a New Christian named Hector Mendes Bravo whom he rebuked for advancing the “views of the Karaites,” and condemning those who hold such views as “heretics.” The Venetian rabbi Leon Modena was also concerned by the specter of Karaism. Modena was consulted by the Sephardi communal boards of Hamburg and Amsterdam between 1615–1617 over a dispute about Uriel da Costa’s heterodox ideas and printed works. Modena’s attention was drawn to Karaite associations by da Costa himself, who rejected the rabbinic requirement to wear phylacteries and summoned the precedent set by the Karaites as a crucial element of support.4 Many of these examples attest to the antipathy felt toward Karaites and Karaite scholarship in the Amsterdam ex-converso community, as well as authorities in Venice. As Yosef Kaplan concluded, “In Sephardi Jewish polemical literature of the 17th century, the concept of ‘Karaism’ had become synonymous with schismatics and sectarians.”5
The attitude and tenor of Amsterdam’s leading authorities toward Karaite thought, culture, and society was undeniably negative. It is therefore more than surprising that Isaac Athias, a young rabbi trained in Venice who also served in Hamburg, decided to translate a Karaite anti-Christian polemical treatise—Hizzuk Emunah (Strengthening of the Faith), written by Isaac ben Abraham of Troki in 1593. Why did Athias see the Karaite text as essential literature to be translated into Spanish for the edification of new members of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community? Why highlight the importance of a Karaite work in an environment so inimical toward the movement and its ideas?
The inclusion of Karaite texts in the literature intended for the education of ex-conversos joining Jewish communities has not traditionally been noted or emphasized. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi once remarked that “the returning Marrano remained essentially an autodidact and, like all autodidacts, he needed books to read.”6 The scope of the literature that Yerushalmi surveys, which was translated into Spanish and Portuguese and made available to the ex-conversos who joined Jewish communities at this time was indeed remarkable and cut across literary genres. This Spanish literature for ex-conversos included editions of the Bible, such as numerous editions of the 1553 Ferrara Bible, and liturgical works such as the Libro de oraciones de todo el anno—also printed in Ferrara.7 Books on the performance of Judaism’s commandments such as Rabbi Isaac Athias’ (more traditional) Tesoro de preceptos, and halakhic works like Ladino abridgements of Joseph Karo’s classic halakhic manual the Shulhan Arukh were printed in 1568 and 1602. Across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish editions of the Mishnah were printed in Venice and Amsterdam in 1606 and 1663 respectively, historical works such as Samuel Usque’s Consolacam as tribulacoens de Israel and Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shebet Yehudah printed in Ferrara, in 1553 and Amsterdam in 1640.
This list of Jewish classics makes unusual company for the Karaite scholar Isaac ben Abraham of Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah, which was reprinted widely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and translated into Yiddish, Latin, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, among other languages during this period. The many editions of Hizzuk Emunah include Isaac Athias’ manuscript copy produced at Hamburg in 1621 under the title Fortificaçion de la Fee (Strengthening of the Faith), which was also copied at Amsterdam in 1624 under the title Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh (Strengthening of the Law of Moses).8 Unlike the books cited by Yerushalmi above, Troki’s writings were not classics of the Sephardi world. Their author was not a figure of significance in the Sephardi world, or a member of the Spanish and Portuguese community with whom the ex-conversos could identify. The author was not even a rabbinic Jewish figure in the first instance—a fact that was seen as significantly problematic by Isaac Athias, and which is discussed below. Given all of this, why would a respected rabbi of the Jewish world during this period, such as Athias, turn to a Karaite work in order to help bridge the gap between Christianity and Judaism that the conversos sought to traverse? Why was it necessary to focus ex-conversos’ attention on the thought and writings of a Karaite scholar so early in the history of the northwest European Sephardi diaspora in Amsterdam and Hamburg? Might this decision even be counterproductive, risky, or even dangerous—in light of the incomplete understanding of rabbinic Judaism that many conversos possessed on their arrival in Amsterdam? Could exposure to the scholarship of Karaite authors undermine the effort to integrate members of the converso world into Jewish communities?
After introducing the original author of Hizzuk Emunah—Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, and its translator Isaac Athias, this essay will trace how a multi-tiered translation effort both presented the text of a Karaite anti-Christian polemic to an audience of ex-conversos, and simultaneously expanded upon the original work, intervening in the language of Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah to calibrate the text at an even higher level for Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who were either ex-conversos themselves or descendants of ex-conversos. This translation effort goes beyond the linguistic and most frequent meaning of the term—and enabled Athias to craft a version of Hizzuk Emunah that was a useful tool in the process of educating conversos joining the Jewish communities of Hamburg and Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century. The work that Athias produced—Fortificaçion de la fee—was similar in title to the exemplar that he worked from, Hizzuk Emunah. But it was a very different work overall. The expanded version of the Fortificaçion accentuated Christian teachings to an even higher degree, drew attention to the differences between rabbinic Judaism and Karaite traditions, and emphasized rabbinic teachings to make Hizzuk Emunah more compatible with the norms of the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam.
Troki and Athias, Writer and Translator
Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, and Isaac Athias of Venice, could not have been more seemingly different. Born in 1533 in Troki, near Vilna, Isaac ben Abraham was part of a Karaite community and tradition in the region that had been established earlier in the fourteenth century. During his lifetime, the region was one of the major centers of Karaism in Poland-Lithuania, and he was educated by one of the more prominent Karaite figures of the region, Zefania ben Mordechai in Troki. Living in a multicultural milieu that included rabbinic and Karaite Jews; Roman Catholic; Greek Orthodox Christians; Protestant; and Anti-Trinitarian Christians, Troki was well versed in the beliefs and doctrine of Christian and rabbinic Jewish communities, and he wrote polemical works against both: Hizzuk Emunah against his Christian opponents in 1593; and his (undated) manuscript Polemic Against the Rabbanites.9 As Carsten Wilke has argued, Troki’s anti-Christian polemic belongs to a style that confronts an imagined opponent and aims to strengthen the self-confidence of the Jewish reader, rather than providing a manual for conducting heated, face-to-face disputations.10
Hizzuk Emunah is divided into two parts, comprised of 50 and 100 chapters, focusing on Christian allegations against Jews and Judaism in the first section and on aspersions cast against the New Testament in the second. Troki provides answers in both sections informed by historical and philological interpretations and investigations to both Scriptures. Throughout, the text is heavily informed by intra-Christian polemics waged between Catholics, Protestants, and radical anti-Trinitarian Christians in the regions in which he lived. Isaac of Troki read and utilized the “Christian Dialogues” by Marcin Czechowicz along with the Italian skeptic Niccolo Paruta’s De Uno Vero Deo. He utilized the Bible translated by the heterodox figure Szymon Budny (1530–1593) who rejected the divinity of Jesus and argued for the universal acceptance of the Seven Noachide Laws.11
Unexpectedly—at first glance—Troki also refers to an array of rabbinic writings on halakhah, Talmudic literature, and exegesis. However, by the late sixteenth century there was a significant degree of intermingling of Karaite scholars with rabbinic Jewish society. Many leading Karaite figures and their students cross-pollinated in educational settings with rabbinic teachers, in part due to the small size of their community, and in part due to the crescendo of printed material circulating at this time, which created a vast and accessible library of rabbinic texts.12 In general though, at a theological level, Karaite scholars continued to reject rabbinic claims about the authority of Oral Torah and the chain of transmission of rabbinic Judaism’s oral law—perspectives that, as we shall see, greatly disturbed Isaac Athias as he translated Troki’s writings for an audience of ex-converso rabbinic Jews. While Isaac of Troki wrote the bulk of Hizzuk Emunah, the work was completed by a student—Yosef ben Mordecai Malinowski (~1569–1610) after the original author’s death, also adding of his own accord a preface and index.13
Isaac Athias, who translated Hizzuk Emunah into Spanish, was born to a converso family in Lisbon in 1585, whose family moved to Castile, before settling in Venice—where Athias studied with Saul Levi Mortera. His mentor would soon relocate to Paris and then Amsterdam, where Mortera would spend the rest of his life. Athias, meanwhile, served as the inaugural rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg before returning to Venice as rabbi of the Sephardi community in this center in 1622.14 Athias certainly remembered his time in the Hamburg community fondly, dedicating his Tesoro de preceptos (Treasury of Precepts; Venice, 1627) to the city’s ex-conversos, and “to the years that I spent in their pleasant company and domain.”15 The Tesoro, a description of Judaism’s 613 commandments in the long and venerable tradition of literature on this subject, was very much part of the body of literature Yerushalmi identified as being intended for the ex-converso arrivals in the Sephardi diaspora.
As Athias wrote, the treatise was intended for the most noble nation of Spain, with expulsions, calamities, deaths, and extreme troubles,” and those who “emerged from such a bitter captivity” and returned to Judaism. Athias envisioned his treatise as providing ex-conversos who “until now … have enjoyed only the Bible, with no commentary whatever, and the holy prayers, and some few other compilations” with “this great foundation of the commandments, making these known to [them] who, for lacking the language, cannot see them in their original source.”16 Athias’ treatise indeed was a crucial work studied by Abraham Cardoso, the brother of Yerushalmi’s famous ex-converso subject Isaac Cardoso, as he integrated into the Jewish world of sixteenth century Venice.17 In translating Hizzuk Emunah for an audience of newly converted Sephardi ex-conversos, Athias has been seen as part of a group of rabbis whose anti-Christian writings perpetuated a more “medieval mode of polemical expression: they compiled inventories of exegetical arguments in the order of the biblical text.”18
Traditional though the organization, purpose, and methodology may be, Athias’ decision to translate Hizzuk Emunah into Spanish for an audience of ex-conversos, and to expand upon and elaborate its arguments is nevertheless unexpected. It is not intuitively obvious why a rabbinic author seeking to make edifying information about the Jewish tradition available to an audience of ethnic peers would select a polemical anti-Christian work written by an East European Karaite figure. Athias’ deliberate choice is even more perplexing in light of the ambivalent attitude (at best) toward Karaite Jews in ex-converso Amsterdam, described above. Isaac Athias himself was likewise hardly enamored with Karaism and Karaite scholarship generally.
In Athias’ detailed introduction to the Fortificaçion de la fee, he observes with some consternation the fact that the original author of Hizzuk Emunah “was a Karaite from those who deny the Oral Law received at Sinai by Moses, our master.”19 Athias acknowledged that there were “some matters in the book that were severely contradictory” to rabbinic Jewish interpretations—“as will be seen.”20 Athias—seemingly unable to wait until encountering such claims in the main body of the book he is translating, felt the need to interrupt Isaac ben Abraham of Troki already in the prologue to Hizzuk Emunah, in order to inveigh against how there are numerous beliefs and assumptions in the book that “cannot be supported except through our blessed rabbis [nuestros bienauenturados] whom they deny, and their sublime expositions.”21
Later, in an annotation located in Chapter 7 of the Fortificaçion, Athias expresses his disdain for Karaites again and at greater length. Here, in a prolonged discourse on the duration of the current “captivity” in which the Jews were held, Athias writes particularly disparagingly about Karaites and Karaism. In this section of the work, Troki confronted Christian adversaries who argued that all previous “captivities” had not only been dramatically shorter, and also that their duration was foretold to select, privileged individuals. Consequently, the duration of the current exile, and its unknown duration, are signs of irrevocable permanence. Troki’s rebuttal is based on compelling biblical exegesis—but Athias remained dissatisfied: despite everything that Troki had deployed against his Christian readers, in defense of Judaism, Athias writes that “it is not sufficiently proven for the author who is not a Karaite (no ser Carray),” as Athias was most certainly not. He was dissatisfied because, as he writes, “the caraim … do not even know who the talmudists are, and beyond this they are by their very nature insufficiently educated and learned (“muy poco letrados y estudiosos”) in order to read these books.” Without the additional interpretations, guidance, and expertise of rabbinic Jewish sages, the correct understanding of the duration of Israel’s captivity was impossible—in Athias’ estimation. Athias was at one with his contemporaries and their worldview in casting a skeptical eye at Karaites and Karaism.
Scripture and Salvation
Why, despite his evident contempt for Karaites, did Athias nevertheless choose to translate Hizzuk Emunah and craft it into the Fortificaçion? Athias justifies translating the book into Spanish for the ex-conversos, explaining that in spite of these reservations, “I did not refrain from accepting this book, since we have an obligation (as the sages have taught) to accept the truth from whoever speaks it.”22 Problematic though the text might be in some respects, the appeal must have outweighed the negative aspects. The appeal of Hizzuk Emunah in the context of northwest Europe’s ex-converso communities of Hamburg and Amsterdam lay at least partly in the way that their communities accentuated direct engagement with the Bible—socially, educationally, and intellectually in ways that other Jewish communities of medieval and early modern Europe did not, where the study of Talmud was centered to a higher degree.
In Amsterdam for example, the community school system was structured to teach the Bible systematically to children, progressively moving through the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings, adding along the way instruction in the biblical cantillation marks, and sometimes the commentaries of Rashi—but completely leaving rabbinic literature to the side. Talmud and halakhic works were reserved for the highest levels of the school system that few students in fact reached. It was commonplace for adults as well to delve deeply into the Bible within confraternities such as the Gemilut Hasadim burial society, where members of the confraternity met every Sabbath to discuss passages from the Bible, systematically working their way through the entire text—over the course of a period of almost twenty-five years.23 Children and adults alike in Amsterdam were often comfortable and fluent in the world of Scripture, in a way that they were not with the direct study of rabbinic literature and halakhah.
A polemical, anti-Christian work based on debates about biblical interpretation, such as Hizzuk Emunah, may have been seen as aligning with the sensibilities of the ex-converso community to a greater degree than literature more heavily dependent upon prior knowledge of rabbinic literature, or a deep education in rabbinic texts or traditions. The title page of the Fortificaçion itself may offer additional, insightful clues about the appeal of the text. The title emphasizes that the Fortificaçion de la Fee was “the pillar that fortifies the afflicted hearts of Israel in its captivity, showing them the eternally expected salvation, and demonstrating the obscurity and falsity of their adversaries’ opinions, for which all of the passages of Scripture that they interpret in their favor against us are noted.”24 After attempting to thwart the Christian interpretations, the verses are “explained according to their true sense with an amenable style and great erudition.”25 The Fortificaçion promised to lead its readers–and their community—on the path toward salvation by helping them shift from a Christian mode of reading and understanding the promises of the Bible, to a Jewish vantage point.
In emphasizing the role of reading and engaging with the Bible in leading the Jewish reader to salvation, Athias drew upon a concept linking the Bible and salvation that strongly resonated with the Jewish community of early seventeenth century Amsterdam and that in the future would form a bedrock of how the Bible was perceived among the ex-conversos. The assumed connection between salvation and engagement with Scripture is evident pervasively in this world. Menasseh ben Israel’s Humas de Parasioth y Aftharoth (Amsterdam, 1627), a liturgical text for following the weekly Torah portions and haftaroth in synagogue, offers a very early parallel in the period just after Athias’ translation of the Fortificaçion. In the Portuguese introduction to his work, Menasseh affirms to his readers why it is important to regularly read Scripture: “‘During the day and the night you shall not have any other occupation than divine meditation’: because in this … the path to salvation is found,” and insists that the “advantage I wished to show you [the reader], of this book, of assiduously reading Scriptures each week, was eternal salvation.”26
Menasseh’s Conciliador is replete with similar arguments emphasizing the connection between the Bible and salvation. In the preface to the initial 1632 volume, Menasseh’s pitch to the prospective buyer of his enormous tome is that the investment of their money will pay off beneficially for them in their “enjoyment and salvation.”27 In Question 125 of the Conciliador, in the main body of the text, Menasseh discusses what he views as the perfect manner of the giving of the law from a number of perspectives, and emphasizes that the conditions under which the law was given in the desert had to be perfect, because it is through the Bible and its doctrines upon which the Israelites’ salvation depended. The desert, Menasseh emphasizes, is a geographic location “common to all,” and so too the Bible is a text shared by “all those who desire to be saved by it, even though at first it was given only to Israel.”28 The connection made in the Fortificaçion between scripture and salvation was shared deeply by Menasseh, and other members of his community, helping us to understand the appeal of such a text to Spanish and Portuguese Jews—even if it came from the pen of a Karaite.
Other Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam made this connection as well—not just Menasseh. The casual, idiomatic way in which they uses the terms suggests that they did not fear push back or objection, but rather that they were saying something that reflected broadly held sentiments in the community. In a mahzor printed compiled by David Pardo and Salom ben Yosseph in 1630, described Scripture as “the source and deliverer of life and salvation.”29 In 1640, Saul Levi Mortera—one of Amsterdam’s leading rabbis—preached to the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam about the importance of active performance of the commandments in attaining salvation, in contrast to Christian teachings emphasizing that faith alone led an individual to eternal spiritual reward.30 Later in the seventeenth century, Daniel Levi de Barrios would describe a the Keter Sem Tob (Crown of the Good Name) confraternity, where young boys and girls from the Portuguese Jewish community engaged in collective Bible study. He emphasizes that the young members of this charitable society “study the Holy Law one hour every Sabbath … in order to attain eternal reward,” and to leave the path of “ruin” for “the path of salvation.”31 A shared concern and identification with the link between Scripture and the individual’s quest for salvation of their soul may have led Athias to select Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah as an important text to make available to the ex-converso community in Amsterdam.
Reshaping Hizzuk Emunah into the Fortificaçion
While the text of Hizzuk Emunah had notable appeal to Athias and members of the Sephardi community in Hamburg and Amsterdam, the process of translation was not an act of mere mimicry, reproducing precisely the text of Troki’s original in Spanish. Rather, the transformation from Hizzuk Emunah into the Fortificaçion involved authorial interventions, both large and small. The ways in which Isaac Athias manipulated, rearranged, and added substantially to its contents profoundly altered the way in which readers encountered Hizzuk Emunah, and these elements must also be addressed. One of these elements is the title ascribed to the Karaite author of Hizzuk Emunah, R. Isaac ben Abraham of Troki. Turning to the title page of Athias’ translation, an ex-converso reader would encounter the presentation of Troki as “the very learned Señor H:H: R. Yshac de Lithuania.” The scholar who is promised to give readers the “true meaning [of Scripture] in a most accessible and erudite style”32 is an East European Karaite Jew who has been restyled as a Sephardi hakham. Troki was thus introduced to readers of the Fortificaçion as an authority on a similar level to the most important religious leaders of Sephardi Jews in northwest Europe during this time, and that was used by the Mahamad (the lay board of governors) in Amsterdam in the drafting of contracts appointing the community’s most senior rabbis.33 Although the title page indicated that Troki was Lithuanian, he became—at least partly, at least a little bit—a Sephardi rabbinic authority, in the way that he was presented to the readers of the Fortificaçion. Crafting the title page in this fashion, and re-fashioning the identity of the Karaite author, primed Sephardi readers of the manuscript in Amsterdam and Hamburg to see Troki as a respected authority on par with the most venerated leaders of their own communities.
Athias’ interventions in Hizzuk Emunah were not limited to the title page. The anotaciones—substantive interjections, comments, and discourses that Athias scatters throughout the text were a crucial device in the making of Hizzuk Emunah for Sephardi eyes. It is in the anotaciones where Athias could consider the type of edifying explanations that members of the ex-converso community most needed, but were lacking in Troki’s original text of Hizzuk Emunah, and where Athias is able to recalibrate the text for ex-converso sensibilities. Later, in the introduction to the Tesoro de preceptos in 1627, Athias wrote with some alarm that the ex-conversos “emerged from such a bitter captivity, without having been instructed since childhood in the discipline of the Law,” and that “they remained, even up to now, deprived of its treasures.” Continuing, he stresses that “until now, they have enjoyed only the Bible, with no commentary whatever, and the holy prayers, and some few other compilations.”34 Athias was concerned about the Bible centered culture of the former conversos and sought to help members of the Sephardi diaspora understand the Bible better from a Jewish perspective. He does this by weaving rabbinic Jewish traditions into the Fortificaçion, and by fortifying Hizzuk Emunah’s rebuttal of Christian exegesis and beliefs—which the ex-conversos knew so well.
The effect of Athias’ anotaciones is evident in his translation of Hizzuk Emunah’s sixteenth chapter, which focuses on a classic locus for Jewish-Christian disputation, Deut. 27:26 “Cursed be whoever will not uphold the terms of this Teaching and observe them.” The Christian position is presented first—“The adversaries say that since the Divine Law says ‘shall be cursed,’ anyone who does not uphold all of its precepts shall be cursed, we shall all be cursed because it is impossible for anyone to uphold and perform all of the commandments.” The Fortificaçion responds, and builds a case that in no way is the biblical text implying that “all those who do not uphold the law in its entirety shall be cursed, the affirmative and negative precepts, which is impossible.”35 The Fortificaçion bases this case and argument on the long lineage of Israelites (biblical and otherwise) who have manifestly not observed each and every law and commandment, but nevertheless were either not cursed due to this shortcoming, or—conversely—unmistakably thrived and were blessed. On the contrary, biblical passages such as Deut. 28:15 “But if you do not obey your God to observe faithfully all the commandments and laws which I enjoin upon you this day, all these curses shall come upon you and take effect,” should be understood to convey that those who do not follow the word of God will be cursed—“if they do not turn around and make complete repentance” for their misdeeds.36
Athias, acting simultaneously as translator and author, makes two anotaciones to Troki’s original text at this juncture. First, he provides evidence that sinners from among the biblical Israelite community could be redeemed, despite their failure to fully adhere to the law flawlessly. Athias’ first anotacion is utilized to show that King David transgressed grievously, in the case of Bathsheba—the wife of Uriah, with whom David had sexual relations before arranging for Uriah to be killed in battle as his compatriots abandoned him. Even in light of all of this, David performed “complete repentance” (perfeta penitencia) and was not cursed. Indeed, despite dynastic instability described in I Kings 15, in which Adonijah attempts to succeed as king, David’s dynasty continues and is not annulled—something that we would not expect if complete and total fulfillment of every commandment were required to avoid the specter of the biblical curse.
A second anotacion in this chapter provided ex-converso readers of Athias’ translation with assurance that this interpretation was deeply rooted in rabbinic Jewish traditions and had the support of highly respected Jewish authorities: “Thus as well R. Moses of Egypt (i.e. Maimonides) says in his commentary on the Mishnah, and it is a very well accepted and approved doctrine, and he says this in regard to the teaching of the celebrated [Talmudic sage] R. Hananiah.”37 The implication of these anotaciones together is that ex-converso readers of Athias’ translation—individuals from families that had been unable to fulfill the commandments at any level close to their entirety—would be reassured that they were not condemned due to this failure, and that Athias’ reassurance had the deep approbation and support of rabbinic tradition.
From their time spent living as Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, or as descendants of families that converted from Christianity to Judaism in the Sephardi Diaspora during the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, members of Athias’ audience of readers were often thoroughly familiar with the texts of the New Testament—and it is to these narratives that the Fortificaçion turns next in its attempts to help reorient the mindset of ex-converso readers from Christian perspectives toward Jewish perspectives. Addressing the language of the New Testament head on, in a serious way was necessary in order to convince and persuade readers who knew these texts and traditions well. Flippant or casual denials would be insufficient.
As Chapter 16 continues, the Fortificaçion explains that “The Christians accuse us … however, we shall accuse them according to the truth of the verse that we find in the Gospels.”38 The Fortificaçion quotes Revelation 22:18–19, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” Interpreting this passage, the Fortificaçion zeros in on the danger of adding to or diminishing from biblical precepts, and insists (with biting sarcasm) that
It is obvious and public to all that the Christians are honored in the net of the curse, since they add to and diminish from the words of the Gospel, as in the observance of the next day of the week as the Sabbath, which is not commanded in the Gospels nor by Jesus nor did his Apostles command it.39
While there is no specific anotacion in this particular chapter elaborating on the polemical, anti-Christian material in Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah, this is something that is a notable feature in other locations of the Fortificaçion. Athias was very much aware of the Christian background shared by many of his readers and was careful to add polemical anotaciones calibrated to address the knowledge that these members of the Western Sephardi Diaspora brought with them into their lives as ex-converso Jews. This is illustrated already in the second chapter of the Fortificaçion, where the text considers, “Regarding what they accuse us, saying: God has rejected the Nation of Israel because they did not follow Jesus and for having executed him, and elected the people of Christianity.”
In this chapter, the Fortificaçion ranges widely regarding the persecution of early Christians by Roman emperors, and the execution of Apostles and early Christians by Roman authorities, as a way of showing that in no way was the privileging of Christianity causally tied to the degraded status of Jews. God, in other words, did not elect Christianity at the same time as Jews were allegedly abandoned, because the historical record contradicts this theological construct. In this context, Athias adds an anotacion amplifying the historical record of early Christianity in order to reassure ex-converso readers (who, after all, were just beginning to read the Fortificaçion) that Christianity was and continued to be divided and contradictory in doctrine and practice.
In this anotacion, Athias first offers a moderate correction to Troki—who in the main body of the translated text above the anotacion presents the archbishop Arius of Alexandria as a general opponent of Christianity “who wrote much against the Christians, but Constantine did not accept his ideas.” In fact, Athias informs the reader, Arius “did not deny Jesus … however his opinion was to separate the substance of the son and the father,” and to “ruin all of the basis” of the emerging new religion.40 Likewise, the anotacion notes that the Christians initially observed the Saturday Sabbath but then arbitrarily altered its observance to Sunday in the year 500 CE, “which Jesus never commanded, nor his Apostles.”41 Athias observes dryly that the doctrinal divisions of the Christian world were not limited to the fourth century, but in fact persist to his own day. Likely drawing upon debates of the Protestant Reformation, Athias shines a spotlight on critiques of Catholic aesthetics and worship: “We see that even today … even in their churches the idols of wood and stone and silver and gold did not cease, and especially the Hosts that they worship … all of which is against the doctrine of Jesus.”42 By enriching the text of Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah in the anotaciones with further information about divisions in the early Christian world and ongoing debates about Christian worship and doctrine, Troki plays to his readers sensibilities as ex-converso Jews. He addresses their thirst for confirmation of their choice to live as Jews in northwest Europe and provides ammunition for their anti-Christian polemical sensibilities.
From Fortificaçion to the Questions Posed by the Priest from Rouen
The Fortificaçion de la fée, the Spanish translation of Isaac ben Abraham of Troki’s Hizzuk Emunah, was an early and very popular manuscript in the Sephardi Diaspora communities of Hamburg and Amsterdam, where it circulated and was copied systematically multiple times early in the histories of these communities. Most of the remarks in this study have focused on the earliest edition of the translation available, the 1621 manuscript copied at Hamburg. A brief—but significant—reference in the manuscript copied at Amsterdam in 1624 is revealing, however, of the larger importance and impact of the Fortificaçion on the thought, identity, and polemics of the ex-converso diaspora in western Europe in the early seventeenth century. The Amsterdam manuscript, appearing under a slightly different title—Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh (Strengthening of the Law of Moses, as opposed to faith), accentuates the biblical centrality of Amsterdam Jewish community, whose systems of children’s education, rabbinic scholarship, adult learning opportunities, and leisure activities were often centered on different ways of engaging with Scripture.43
Chapter 38 of the Hamburg and Amsterdam copies of the Fortificaçion concentrate on Malachi 1:11–12:
For from where the sun rises to where it sets, My name is honored among the nations, and everywhere incense and pure oblation are offered to My name; for My name is honored among the nations—Said God of Hosts. But you profane it when you say, “The Table of the Sovereign is defiled and the meat, the food, can be treated with scorn.”
In the Hamburg manuscript, the contentions of the Christian “adversaries” are presented followed by the Jewish response. “The adversaries contend” that this verse foretells the honoring of God by Christians throughout the world and is a “great proof of their faith.”44 The Fortificaçion denies this forcefully. In the first place, the Fortificaçion insists, Jesus had not yet been born and Christianity did not yet exist and thus Malachi’s remarks cannot refer to Christian worship and belief.45 Yet, perhaps self-conscious that this explanation would not survive a prophetic, futuristic reading of the passage in question—one that could see Malachi as prefiguring the future of Christianity, additional explanations are offered. Beyond this initial explanation, the Fortificaçion insists that the kinds of worship described in Malachi as being practiced by the Nations of the world were services, incense, gifts, and sacrifices offered “to the seven planets and the twelve signs [of the Zodiac], and to idols and images.”46 At best, according to the Fortificaçion, the worship practices of the Nations described by Malachi were inappropriate but well intentioned. When the verse states that “incense” is offered in the name of the Lord, what the text really means—according to the Fortificaçion—is that
Even when the Nations practiced idolatry, it was with the intent to worship the Lord, because in the time that they were sacrificing to their idols, if they were to be asked to whom they were sacrificing … they would respond we are sacrificing to God who created the heavens and the earth, and this incense is offered in my name.47
Chapter 38 in the Hamburg Fortificaçion of 1621 has no anotaciones, no editorial interruptions that color and reshape so many other chapters of the work. The Fortificaçion copied at Amsterdam in 1624, however, does have anotaciones—one of which offers an enticing clue into the impact of the manuscript and the future of Jewish-Christian polemics in Amsterdam and the Western Sephardi diaspora. Midway through the chapter, an anotacion appears and interjects the copyist’s thoughts into the body of the original text: “For a more satisfactory understanding, I will give an interpretation of my señor and master, R. Saul Levi Mortera, which is very literal.”48 According to Mortera, Malachi’s intent was simply to rebuke the practice of sacrificing blemished or stolen animals and to discourage this type of divine service, since it would render impure the House of the Lord.49
Rabbi Saul Levi Mortera, an Ashkenazi figure born in Venice, served as a spiritual companion to the ex-converso physician Elijah Montalto, with whom he traveled to Paris in 1612. After the death of his patron, Mortera traveled to Amsterdam, buried Montalto, and would remain in Amsterdam where he served as a leader of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam from approximately 1616 until his death in 1659.50 Mortera was appointed rabbi of the Beth Jacob congregation in 1618—one of the original three ex-converso congregations in the city. He was hired to teach Bible, Talmud, and grammar in the nascent school system that was being established in the community. The presence of an anotacion in the Amsterdam, 1624 manuscript relating Mortera’s exegetical interpretation, which is absent in the Hamburg, 1621 edition of the manuscript, strongly suggests that the translator or copyist of the Amsterdam, 1624 manuscript had some kind of direct contact with Mortera. Did the translator or copyist ask for Mortera’s views upon this particular verse? Did Mortera read the Fortificaçion directly, in either the Hamburg or the Amsterdam versions, and decide to share his interpretation with the editor?
The translator seems to have a high degree of respect for Mortera, presenting himself deferentially as Mortera’s subordinate and disciple. Might they have been friends? Beyond the possibility of personal contact and exchange between Mortera and this translator, the presence of this anotacion in the Amsterdam, 1624 copy also suggests that the copyists of the Spanish and Portuguese ex-converso diaspora felt a certain flexibility in their copying and transmission of Jewish knowledge contained in manuscript. Malachi Beit Arié once observed that medieval Hebrew manuscripts in the hands of a “talmid hakham” stood a certain risk of being subject to critical intervention by the highly learned copyist who feels entitled to modify, add, and subtract material according to his own criteria.51 As Beit-Arié illustrates through numerous twelfth and fourteenth-century examples, the authors of medieval Hebrew manuscripts had limited control over their works. These works were copied in part and in whole, amended, and expended according to the goals and desires of other copyists and scholars.52 In this respect, the experience of Hizzuk Emunah in Athias’ hands—not to mention those of later translators and copyists—embodies some of these “dangers,” and offers a poignant reminder that the fluidity of medieval Hebrew manuscript culture was alive and well in the seventeenth century. The copyists of Hizzuk Emunah and the Fortificaçion were eminently comfortable interjecting in the text on which they worked, adding authorial interjections, and even expanding upon an existing translated exemplar already in their hands.
Mortera was a preacher and teacher in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community—and a prolific author. His first extensive treatise as a religious and intellectual leader was the “Questions Posed by a Priest from Rouen” (Preguntas que hizo un clerigo de Ruan), written in manuscript form in 1631. The Preguntas, written in response to a series of theological questions from a French priest (Diego de Cisneros) was copied and translated from its original Portuguese into at least seventeen known additional versions in Latin and Spanish that today are found in archives across Europe.53 The Preguntas in its original form of 1631 contained responses to the twenty-three questions posed by Cisneros, followed by twenty-three aggressive rejoinder questions focusing on the contents of the New Testament. However, Mortera later expanded the scope of the questions targeting the New Testament, bringing the total number of queries in the manuscript to 179.54 Carsten Wilke’s survey of manuscript copies of the Preguntas across Europe and North America reveals that different versions of the work containing diverse ranges of questions and counter-questions are preserved in copies produced by different authors, sometimes enclosed in miscellanies that join the Preguntas with other texts, and other times as a standalone work.55 The Preguntas and the Fortificaçion alike were Jewish manuscripts whose contents and form were intimately shaped not only by their original authors, but by the translators, copyists, and scholars who engaged with the texts.
Was the Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh, copied in Amsterdam in 1624, an inspiration for Mortera’s Preguntas? There are certainly structural similarities—both texts are anti-Christian polemical works divided into sections that juxtapose defenses of Judaism in Part I, with a subsequent Part II that advances specific attacks against the New Testament, and there is an overlap of some of the specific contentions and doctrines that both of the texts address—up to a point. H. P. Salomon, the pioneering scholar of ex-converso Jewish Amsterdam and its intellectual activity, affirmed that the connection between Isaac Troki’s late sixteenth-century Hizzuk Emunah, the Fortificaçion, and Mortera’s Preguntas was deep and consequential based on structural similarities shared by the two works, and some similarities in contents. However, as Carsten Wilke argues in his thoroughly comprehensive and revealing study of the recension history of the Preguntas, only around nineteen percent of the allegations found in the second part of the Fortificaçion are addressed also in the Preguntas, leading Wilke to infer that there was less of a connection between the polemical works than might at first have appeared to be the case: “Either Mortera had a supplementary source, or he was more original as an author than Salomon’s review suggests.”56 It is also notable that the similarities of format, and the structuring of both polemical works according to numbered propositions, is traceable to conventional forms of scholastic disputation and composition in the medieval world, and is not especially unique to Troki, Athias, or Mortera.57
Between these two perspectives, that of Salomon and that of Wilke, what we can perhaps say here is that the intellectual and literary environment in which Saul Levi Mortera immersed himself in the early 1620s clearly promoted the model of this type of literature and writing in polemical contexts. The specific reference to Mortera found in the Amsterdam, 1624 version of the Fortificaçion allows us to suggest that Mortera was directly aware of this type of writing—and was perhaps inspired by it. Indeed, a few short years after the appearance of the Amsterdam Fortificaçion manuscript, Mortera would author his own illicit, anti-Christian manuscript—the Preguntas—which would become a classic of Amsterdam ex-converso culture in its own right.
Like the Fortificaçion, the Preguntas would go on to be copied, amended, reorganized, and expanded, producing numerous versions of the text in Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages. In the Spanish and Portuguese communities of northwest Europe, Jewish readers interested in Jewish-Christian debates over biblical interpretation could now turn to versions of the Preguntas—a polemical, anti-Christian work by a rabbinic scholar—Mortera—who was a spiritual leader in one of their own communities, alongside the Karaite book that may have inspired him—the Fortificaçion.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Athias, Isaac. Fortificaçion de la fee. Mss. EH 48 D 05. Hamburg, 1621.
Athias, Isaac. Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh. EH 48 C 6. Amsterdam, 1624.
Athias, Isaac. Tesoro de Preceptos. Venice, 1627.
Israel, Menasseh ben. Conciliador, o de la conveniencia de los lugares de la S.Escriptura, que repugnantes entre si parecen Vol. 1. Frankfurt, 1632.
Israel, Menasseh ben. Humas de Parasioth y Aftharoth. Amsterdam, 1627.
Secondary Sources
Albert, Anne O. Jewish Politics in Spinoza’s Amsterdam. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization and Liverpool University Press, 2022.
Akhiezer, Golda. “The Karaite Isaac ben Abraham of Troki and his Polemic Against the Rabbanites.” In Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, edited by Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel, 437–468. Be’er-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006.
Beit-Arié, Malachi. “Transmission of Texts by Scribes and Copyists: Unconscious and Critical Interferences.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 75, no. 3 (1993): 33–51.
Benfatto, Miriam. “The Work of Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (16th Century): On the Place of Sefer Hizzuq Emunah in the Quest for the Historical Jesus.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 17 (2019): 102–120.
Benfatto, Miriam. “The Manuscript as a medium. A critical look at the circulation of the Sefer Hizzuq Emunah by Isaac ben Abraham Troki (c. 1533–1594).” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 85, no. 1 (2019): 235–243.
Demota, Yehonatan Elazar. “Early Modern Portuguese Jewish Conceptions of Dominium and Libertas and Constructions of Community.” Studia Rosenthaliana 49, no. 1 (2023): 23–39.
Den Boer, Harm. La Literatura Sefardi de Amsterdam. Alcala: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardiés y Andalucíes, Universidad de Alcalá, 1995.
Fisher, Benjamin. Amsterdam’s People of the Book: Jewish Society and the Turn to Scripture in the Seventeenth Century. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2020.
Fisher, Benjamin. “God’s Word Defended: Menasseh ben Israel, Biblical Chronology, and the Erosion of Biblical Authority.” In Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned, edited by Dirk van Miert et al., 155–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Kaplan, Yosef. “‘Karaites’ in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam.” In Sceptics, Millenarians, and Jews, edited by David Katz and Richard Popkin, 196–236. Leiden: Brill, 1990.
Wilke, Carsten. “Questions d’un Prêtre de Rouen à un Rabbin d’Amsterdam.” La Lettre Clandestine 27 (2019): 141–169.
Wilke, Carsten. “Clandestine Classics: Isaac Orobio and the Polemical Genre Among the Dutch Sephardim.” In Isaac Orobio: The Jewish Argument with Dogma and Doubt. Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2018.
Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Sevetneenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. The Re-education of Marranos in the Seventeenth Century. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati, 1980.
Biblical citations, unless quoted directly from medieval manuscripts explored in this study, rely upon the The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006 edition. New Testament quotations rely upon the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.
For the relationship between Jews in the Sephardi Diaspora in general, Karaites, and the idea of Karaism, see Y. Kaplan, “‘Karaites’ in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” in Sceptics, Millenarians, and Jews, ed. D. Katz and R. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 196–236. The original text of Menasseh’s thoughts about the Karaites is located in Menasseh ben Israel, Conciliador, o de la conveniencia de los lugares de la S.Escriptura, que repugnantes entre si parecen Vol. 1 (1632), 262. For a wider study of the Conciliador, see B. Fisher, “God’s Word Defended: Menasseh ben Israel, Biblical Chronology, and the Erosion of Biblical Authority,” in Scriptural Authority and Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Golden Age: God’s Word Questioned, ed. D. van Miert et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 155–74.
Kaplan, “Karaites in Early Eighteenth Century Amsterdam,” 212.
Ibid., 204–7.
Ibid., 207.
Y. H. Yerushalmi, The Re-education of Marranos in the Seventeenth Century (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati, 1980), 7.
Regarding the printing of biblical translations and Spanish-language liturgical works in the western Sephardi diaspora, see H. den Boer, La Literatura Sefardi de Amsterdam (Alcala: Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sefardiés y Andalucíes, Universidad de Alcalá, 1995). The Ferrara Bible and its adaptations were among the most ubiquitously reprinted biblical texts among Spanish and Portuguese Jews in northwest Europe from the sixteenth century into the eighteenth century, although there were also frustrations with what was seen as a heavily literal style of translation, which led to further translation efforts and even a turn to Christian version of the Bible that were seen as more linguistically appealing.
I. Athias, Fortificaçion de la fee, Mss. EH 48 D 05 (Hamburg, 1621); Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh, EH 48 C 6 (Amsterdam, 1624). Most citations in this article utilize the Hamburg manuscript, but key differences evident in the Amsterdam copy are noted below.
See G. Akhiezer, “The Karaite Isaac ben Abraham of Troki and his Polemic Against the Rabbanites,” in Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, ed. Ch. Goodblatt and H. Kreisel (Be’er-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2006), 437–68. See also Miriam Benfatto, “The Work of Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (16th Century): On the Place of Sefer Hizzuq Emunah in the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 17 (2019): 102–20; and ibid., “The Manuscript as a medium. A critical look at the circulation of the Sefer Hizzuq Emunah by Isaac ben Abraham Troki (c. 1533–1594), in Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 85, no. 1 (2019): 235–43. As noted in Akhiezer, “Isaac ben Abraham of Troki,” 449, no date is discernable for the composition of Troki’s polemic against rabbinic Judaism.
See C. Wilke, “Clandestine Classics: Isaac Orobio and the Polemical Genre Among the Dutch Sephardim,” in Isaac Orobio: The Jewish Argument with Dogma and Doubt (Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2018) 66.
See Akhiezer, “Isaac ben Abraham of Troki,” 442–44.
See ibid., 445ff.
See ibid., 437, n.1.
See Y. E. Demota, “Early Modern Portuguese Jewish Conceptions of Dominium and Libertas and Constructions of Community,” Studia Rosenthaliana 49, no. 1 (2023): 29.
I. Athias, Tesoro de Preceptos (Venice, 1627) “Al venerado kahal kadosh Talmud Torah de Hamburgo” (unpaginated).
Ibid., 3–4. See Yerushalmi’s quotation and translation in From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1971), 204.
Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, 205.
Wilke, “Clandestine Classics,” 72.
Athias, Fortificaçion, Introduction: “… fue Karrai de los que negan la ley de boca recibida en sinay por Mosseh nuestro maestro.”
Ibid.: “… tiene algunas cosas en el libro que lo repugnan como severa.”
Ibid.: “… no se pueden ajudar sino de nuestros bienauenturados aquien ellos negan y sus altas esposisiones …”
Athias, Fortificaçion: “Tenemos obligacion como los sabios ensenan de recibir la verdad de quien la dixiere.”
See B. Fisher, Amsterdam’s People of the Book: Jewish Society and the Turn to Scripture in the Seventeenth Century (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2020), 66–9.
Athias, Fortificaçion, Title Page: “Coluna que fortifica los aflictos coracones de la casa de Israel captiva anunciándoles la sempiterna salvación esperado ymostrando la escuridad delos adversarios y falsedad de sus opiniones.”
Athias, Fortificaçion, title page [unpaginated].
M. ben Israel, Humas de Parasioth y Aftharoth, Prologo ao lector. See also Fisher, Amsterdam’s People of the Book, 89–90.
M. ben Israel, Conciliador, vol. 1 “Al lector” [unpaginated]. See also Fisher, Amsterdam’s People of the Book, 90.
M. ben Israel, Conciliador, vol. 1, 285.
Fisher, Amsterdam’s People of the Book, 91.
Ibid., 111.
Ibid., 50.
Athias, Fortificaçion, title page [unpaginated].
See A. O. Albert, Jewish Politics in Spinoza’s Amsterdam (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization and Liverpool University Press, 2022), 198–99.
Athias, Tesoro de preceptos, 3–4, and Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, 204.
Athias, Fortificaçion, fol. 82–83.
Ibid., fol. 84.
Athias, Fortificaçion, fol. 84.
Ibid., fol. 85.
Ibid., fol. 85–86.
Athias, Fortificaçion, fol. 23–24.
Ibid., fol. 24.
Ibid.
I. Athias, Fortificaçion de la Ley de Moseh, Mss. Ets Haim (Amsterdam) EH 48 C 6.
Isaac Athias, Fortificaçion, fol. 162–63.
Ibid., fol. 163.
Athias, Fortificaçion.
Ibid.
Athias, Fortificaçion [Amsterdam, 1624] 316.
Ibid., 316–317.
See C. Wilke, “Questions d’un Prêtre de Rouen à un Rabbin d’Amsterdam,” La Lettre Clandestine 27 (2019): 142.
See M. Beit-Arié, “Transmission of Texts by Scribes and Copyists: Unconscious and Critical Interferences,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 75, no. 3 (1993): 33–51.
Ibid., 34–35.
Wilke, “Questions,” 143.
Ibid., 148–49.
Ibid., 152–64.
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 168.