Moses Gideon Abudiente

Moses Gideon Abudiente was born in Lisbon. He later moved to Amsterdam, where, at the age of fourteen, he acted in the first performance of Dialogo des Montes (Dialogue of the Mountains), a religious play in Portuguese by Reuel Jessurun. Abudiente subsequently married Jessurun’s daughter. He was living in Hamburg by spring 1633, when his Grammatica Hebraica—a manual for Portuguese Jews seeking to improve their proficiency in Hebrew, with tips for composing verses in an elegant style—was published in the city. The endorsements suggest that he was well connected among the Hamburg Sephardim. Abudiente was involved in the Sabbatean controversy. In 1666, the community banned his book Fin de los dias (The End of Days), one of the first books written in support of Shabbetai Tzvi. Abudiente’s most important work, Avne shoham (Onyx Stones), which established his reputation as a poet, was never published and remains in manuscript.