From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro

Yosef Kaplan was born and raised in Buenos Aires. In 1962 he immigrated to Israel. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, majoring in Jewish history and sociology. In 1979 he completed his Ph.D. in Jewish history. He is Bernard Cherrick Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; visiting professor at Yale University; fellow at the Royal Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar (the Netherlands); associate director of research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Goldsmid Visiting Professor at University College London; visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford; associate director of research at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris; visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford; and a member of the School of Historical Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He was chairman of the Historical Society of Israel and member of the editorial board of the historical quarterly Zion. He was one of the founders of the School of History at the Hebrew University and its second director. In 2004 he was elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and since October 2013 he has been chair of the Humanities Division. Between 2009 and 2013 he was the chairman of the World Union of Jewish Studies. In 2013 he was awarded the Israel Prize in Jewish History. His publications include From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Hebrew, 1982; English, 1989); Judíos Nuevos en Amsterdam (1996; French, 1999); and An Alternative Path to Modernity (2000; enlarged Hebrew version, 2002). He has edited and coedited twenty books. He is the editor of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 5: The Early Modern Era, 1500–1750.