Three Picture Poems

Solomon de Oliveyra was a rabbi, philologist, and poet. He was born to a family of former New Christians in Amsterdam, where he served as a teacher and member of the rabbinic court of the Spanish-Portuguese community. He was subsequently appointed head of the rabbinic court. Oliveyra wrote in Hebrew and Portuguese (including a Portuguese translation of writings by Isaiah Horowitz, entitled Enseña a pecadores [Instruction for Sinners; 1666]). In particular, Oliveyra devoted himself to Hebrew liturgical poetry and philology: he composed a Hebrew rhyming dictionary, textbooks, a number of grammatical treatises, an Aramaic–Portuguese lexicon, a collection of talmudic and scientific Hebrew terms, and a dictionary of rabbinic terms, in addition to numerous elegies, epitaphs, poems in honor of festive occasions, liturgical poems and hymns, riddles, and didactic poetry. Further writings, including treatises on art, grammar, and logic, have survived in manuscript form.