Menasseh Ben Israel

Born to converso parents and baptized as Manoel Dias Soeiro, Menasseh moved as a boy with his family to Amsterdam, where they reverted to open 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 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 and negotiated (unsuccessfully) with British leaders to obtain written permission for Jewish settlement in England.