Samuel Abbas (also known as Samuel ben Isaac Abbas) translated Baḥya Ibn Pakuda’s famous ethical treatise, Ḥovot ha-levavot (Duties of the Heart), into Portuguese as Hobat alebabot Obrigacam dos coracoens livro moral. He also translated from Dutch to Portuguese the work of a young proselyte, Jan Richen (from the city of Hoorn), called Keset Yonatan (Bow of Jonathan. During his life, Abbas amassed an impressive library that included 1,136 books in different languages. He was buried with his wife in the Jewish cemetery of Hamburg/Altona.
This appraisal of the west has remained Toynbee’s considered judgment. “In my eyes,” he states in the last volume of A Study of History, published in 1961, “the west is a…
This poster of the Soviet Jewry movement, which, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s fought for the right of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union, uses a hammer and sickle, a symbol of communism…
His princely Eminence has been pleased in his benevolence, while I am still confined to bed because of my illness to reveal to me sufficient to let me know that the matter has met with difficulties…