#rabbi isaac aboab da fonseca

[timothywinters]

R' Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, “Zekher asiti leniflaot El” (“Reminded was I of Gd's Miracles”)

Even as communities of crypto-Jews began to take hold in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, Jews from Amsterdam were able to establish the first openly Jewish community in the Americas, in Recife, Brazil. The religious leader of that community was Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, who composed this poem in the 1650s.

Via Jews Across The Americas (x).

[gliklofhameln]

Seder Berakhot (Various blessings, liturgical texts, and halakhic texts), edited by Benjamin Senior Godines, translated by Rabbi Isaac Aboab, Amsterdam: Albertus Magnus, 1687

This is a liturgical and halakhic handbook for use throughout the year. It includes blessings and prayers (in Hebrew with Spanish translation) recited at home and in the synagogue, during the week and on Sabbaths and festivals, over food and over various rituals, as well as at lifecycle events (weddings, circumcisions, celebrations of a daughter’s birth, when visiting the sick, etc.). It even includes a full Passover Haggadah. Halakhic treatises in Hebrew and/or Portuguese discuss the laws of ritual slaughter, inspection of an animal’s organs, dough and ritual bath preparation, and the Jewish calendar. At the rear are several calendaric tables, as well as a chronology of important events in world/Jewish history from the Deluge through the 1648-1649 Chmielnicki Massacres.

The book’s editor, Benjamin Senior Godines, writes in the introduction that he found the manuscript on which the edition was based in the collection of the wealthy merchant Rabbi Isaac de Mattathias Aboab (1631-1707), who also served as the translator into Spanish. Some of the more unique texts included herein are a blessing recited when purchasing a slave, a prayer for those killed in autos-da-fé, and descriptions of ascetic practices (e.g., flogging) for the eve of Yom Kippur. A parallel Hebrew-only edition of the book was issued around the same time by the same publisher.

[gliklofhameln]

Seder Berakhot (various blessings, liturgical texts, and halakhic treatises), edited by Benjamin Senior Godines, translated by Rabbi Isaac Aboab, Amsterdam: Albertus Magnus, 1687

This is a liturgical and halakhic handbook for use throughout the year. It includes blessings and prayers (in Hebrew with Spanish translation) recited at home and in the synagogue, during the week and on Sabbaths and festivals, over food and over various rituals, as well as at lifecycle events (weddings, circumcisions, celebrations of a daughter’s birth, when visiting the sick, etc.). It even includes a full Passover Haggadah. Halakhic treatises in Hebrew and/or Portuguese discuss the laws of ritual slaughter, inspection of an animal’s organs, dough and ritual bath preparation, and the Jewish calendar. At the rear are several calendaric tables, as well as a chronology of important events in world/Jewish history from the Deluge through the 1648-1649 Chmielnicki Massacres.

The book’s editor, Benjamin Senior Godines, writes in the introduction that he found the manuscript on which the edition was based in the collection of the wealthy merchant Rabbi Isaac de Mattathias Aboab (1631-1707), who also served as the translator into Spanish. Some of the more unique texts included herein are a blessing recited when purchasing a slave, a prayer for those killed in autos-da-fé, and descriptions of ascetic practices (e.g., flogging) for the eve of Yom Kippur. A parallel Hebrew-only edition of the book was issued around the same time by the same publisher.