Text of an Excommunication

David Aboab

1745

Facing-page manuscript with Hebrew text. — This text of an excommunication, found in David Aboab’s manuscript of *Sefer emet ve-yatsiv* (True and Certain), chronicles a conflict in the Sephardic congregation of Curaçao. The first Jews arrived in Curaçao as early as 1651, not long after the Dutch captured it from Spain. The community, founded under the name Mikve Israel, was the largest Jewish community in the Americas until 1825.

This text of an excommunication, found in David Aboab’s manuscript of Sefer emet ve-yatsiv (True and Certain), chronicles a conflict in the Sephardic congregation of Curaçao. The first Jews arrived in Curaçao as early as 1651, not long after the Dutch captured it from Spain. The community, founded under the name Mikve Israel, was the largest Jewish community in the Americas until 1825.