Text of an Excommunication

David Aboab

1745

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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.

Credits

Collection Ets Haim—Livraria Montezinos, Amsterdam, EH 47 C 44 005.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

David Aboab

18th Century

David Aboab was an Italian talmudist who came from Jamaica to Curaçao to serve as a teacher and rabbi. In 1746, after a clash with the ḥakhamim (rabbis) Raphael Jessurun and Samuel Mendes de Sola, he was excommunicated. Later, he left Curaçao and went to Amsterdam, taking a manuscript about the events in Curaçao, in which he blamed Sola for the conflict.