Cover of Kol tefila ve-kol zimra

David Franco Mendes was a Dutch-Portuguese businessman born into a prominent Sephardic family of Amsterdam. A prolific writer, he had a gift for languages, of which he knew seven, and wrote his poetry in Hebrew. His best-known literary work is the drama Gemul Atalyah, influenced partly by Jean Racine’s play Athalie. Franco Mendes was also a highly regarded Judaic scholar. In the latter part of his life, a crisis in the Dutch economy ruined his business, obliging him from 1778 on to earn his living by copying manuscripts.