Between the Ends of the Earth and Messianic Redemption: The Torah Work, Metaphysical Thought and Political Mission of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel
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Summary
This survey describes the many-sided figure of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, a spiritual leader and intellectual who was a central factor in shaping Judaism in Western Europe at the beginning of the modern era. The text details his life story as a descendant of anusim (forced converts), the founding of the first Hebrew printing house in Amsterdam, and his thought, which combines Kabbalah, philosophy and a universal approach addressed also to the Christian world. The heart of the work deals with his diplomatic mission to England, which stemmed from a messianic vision according to which the dispersion of the Jews to all the "ends of the earth" would hasten the redemption, as well as with his unique collaboration with the painter Rembrandt. Ultimately, the source stresses Ben Israel's legacy as a cultural mediator who laid the groundwork for the return of the Jews to Britain and for the flourishing of the world of the Jewish book.
Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (5364, 1604 – 14 Kislev 5418, 20 November 1657) represents one of the most multidimensional and influential figures of Western European Judaism in the early modern period [cite: 1, 2, 3, 4]. As the son of a Portuguese family of anusim that returned to Judaism in Amsterdam, his work spread across diverse spheres: spiritual leadership and preaching, the founding of the first Hebrew printing house in Holland, and world-embracing international diplomacy [cite: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6]. His Torah teaching did not confine itself to the "four cubits" of halakha, but was characterized by a universal approach that sought to mediate the faith of Israel to the Christian world, to defend the Hebrew Bible against the beginnings of biblical criticism, and to ground the geographical dispersion of the Jews as a cosmic process preceding the messianic redemption [cite: 4, 7, 8, 9, 10].
His Life and Youth in the Shadow of the Persecutions of the Inquisition
Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel was born in 1604 on the island of Madeira in Portugal under the Christian name Manoel Dias Soeiro [cite: 4, 6, 11]. His birth took place at the height of the persecutions of the Portuguese Inquisition against the anusim [cite: 5, 11]. His father, Joseph ben Israel, suffered severe torture and was saved from certain death in Lisbon three times, which left him physically and mentally broken for the rest of his life [cite: 4, 7, 8, 9]. Only a year after the birth of his son, the family fled from Portugal to La Rochelle in France, where the child was outwardly raised as a Christian [cite: 4, 11, 12]. In 1610, with the conclusion of a temporary truce mediated by England and France, the family emigrated to the Dutch Republic and settled in Amsterdam, where it openly returned to the fold of Judaism and exchanged its foreign names for Hebrew names [cite: 4, 9, 11].
Despite the abject poverty in which his family lived on its arrival in Holland, his parents invested great efforts in his education, and he was sent to study at the yeshiva of Chacham Isaac Uziel of Fez, rabbi of the "Neve Shalom" congregation in Amsterdam [cite: 4, 7, 8]. Alongside his traditional studies with Chacham Uziel and with Chacham Moses Raphael d'Aguilar, the young Menasseh acquired an astonishing mastery of foreign languages and of the general humanities [cite: 7, 8, 11]. He commanded ten languages and published his works in Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish and English [cite: 1, 4]. His deep knowledge of the esoteric teaching stemmed, among other things, from studying Kabbalah with Chacham Abraham Cohen de Herrera, who was the principal disciple of the Safed kabbalist Chacham Israel Sarug, which explains Menasseh's full command of the Lurianic methodology [cite: 6, 11].
At the age of only 15 he began to preach before the congregation, and when his teacher Chacham Isaac Uziel died in 1622, the 18-year-old Menasseh was appointed his successor as spiritual leader and teacher of the "Neve Shalom" congregation [cite: 2, 4, 7, 8, 12]. Two years later he married Rachel Soeiro, a relative of the renowned commentator Rabbi Isaac Abravanel [cite: 4].
Institutional Standing and Communal Dynamics in Amsterdam
Despite his far-reaching reputation as a prodigy and a charismatic preacher, the institutional standing of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel within the Portuguese community of Amsterdam was complex and accompanied by constant tensions [cite: 7, 8, 13]. The Portuguese community was characterized by a rigid oligarchic structure controlled by the "Ma'amad" (the board of parnassim) [cite: 3, 13]. Of the four rabbis active in the united "Talmud Torah" congregation from 1639, Rabbi Menasseh received the lowest salary, he was required to give lessons to the children of the elementary school, and the frequency of his sermons in the synagogue was low relative to that of his colleagues [cite: 2, 4, 13].
This tension reached its peak when Rabbi Menasseh was placed under a temporary ban (cherem) by the community's leadership following internal disputes concerning his business and public activity [cite: 13]. His relations with his senior colleague, Chacham Saul Levi Morteira, were fraught, and they worsened when the congregations were finally united in 1652 and Menasseh was demoted to the status of a mere secondary judge under Morteira [cite: 4, 13].
This complex communal dynamic also found expression in his relations with his students [cite: 4, 5]. The most prominent of them, Baruch Spinoza, acquired much knowledge from him, but during the period when Rabbi Menasseh was away on his political mission in London (November 1655), the court in Amsterdam imposed the famous ban on Spinoza [cite: 4, 6]. The fact that the ban was imposed in Menasseh's absence highlights the intellectual and institutional gap between Menasseh's mediating and universal approach and the conservative and insular line led by the community's parnassim and Chacham Morteira at that time [cite: 4, 9, 13].
His Torah Teaching and His Works of Thought
Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel was an exceptionally prolific author who combined in his thought Torah and science, Kabbalah and philosophy [cite: 2, 11, 13]. His intellectual approach rested on the principle of "accept the truth from whoever speaks it," while he stressed that the external sciences served him as a profound aid to understanding the truth of the Torah, without becoming his main and constant occupation [cite: 4].
The Book Conciliador (The Decider / The Reconciler)
The book, published in four parts between 1632 and 1651 in Spanish (and later translated into Latin), is considered Rabbi Menasseh's intellectual masterpiece [cite: 2, 11, 14]. Its central aim was to reconcile hundreds of apparent contradictions between various verses of Scripture [cite: 2, 4, 9, 11]. The book was written in an era when the first challenges to the faith of the Sages and to the authority of the Oral Torah began to be heard in Amsterdam, both from within (from anusim who had returned to Judaism but found it hard to accept the rabbinic interpretation, such as Uriel da Costa) and from without (from Christian critics of Scripture) [cite: 2, 7, 8, 9].
In this book Rabbi Menasseh displayed a phenomenal mastery of all the treasures of Torah literature (Mishnah, Talmud, Midrashim and Kabbalah) alongside extensive use of classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle) and of the writings of the Fathers of the Christian Church [cite: 2, 6, 11, 13]. A clear example of his method appears in his discussion of the reason for the sacrifices in Part I of the work: Rabbi Menasseh explains, following the kabbalists, that had it not been for the sin of Adam, the Divine Presence would always have been found among the lowly creatures [cite: 2]. At the giving of the Torah the people of Israel returned to this exalted level, but lost it again through the sin of the Golden Calf, which caused the departure of the Divine Presence [cite: 2]. From that time on, the sacrifices were required as a spiritual and practical instrument intended to enable the people to bring the Divine Presence back close to the earth [cite: 2].
The Book Nishmat Chaim
This is Rabbi Menasseh's principal metaphysical work in Hebrew, which appeared in 1651 [cite: 6, 11, 15]. In his fascinating introduction to the book, the author describes a sudden visit by a heavenly angel (a maggid) in the early morning hours, who commanded him to compose the book and promised to guide him in the process of writing [cite: 15]. The book is divided into four parts and discusses at length the eternity of the soul, the survival of the soul, matters of spirits and demons, and ibbur (soul impregnation) and the transmigration of souls [cite: 15, 16]. Rabbi Menasseh marshaled the sources of Kabbalah and philosophy to prove the truth of the transmigration of souls, in response to the trends of modern skepticism that had begun to undermine the concept of reward in the World to Come [cite: 6, 9, 15, 16].
Premillennialist Messianism and the Diplomatic Journey to England
The most famous aspect of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel's public activity is his persistent struggle to permit the return of the Jews to the land of England, from which they had been expelled in 1290 by King Edward I [cite: 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11]. These efforts were fed by a profound messianic theology that was prevalent at that time both in Jewish circles and in Puritan circles in England [cite: 6, 10].
Montezinos's Theory of the Ten Tribes
In 1644 Rabbi Menasseh met in Amsterdam the Jewish-Portuguese traveler Aaron Levi (Antonio de Montezinos) [cite: 4, 6, 11]. Montezinos told him that during his travels in the Andes mountains of South America he had met local natives who observed the commandments, recited the Shema and claimed to be descendants of the tribe of Reuben [cite: 4, 5, 6, 11]. This testimony served Rabbi Menasseh as the basis for writing his work "Mikveh Israel" (Esperança de Israel) in 1650 [cite: 2, 4, 6, 11].
According to Rabbi Menasseh's theological analysis, which was based on a premillennialist messianic model (Premillennialism), the complete redemption and the coming of the Messiah are conditional upon the physical dispersion of the Jews to all the ends of the earth, as it is said in the verse "And the Lord shall scatter you among all the peoples, from one end of the earth to the other" (Deuteronomy 28:64) [cite: 4, 6, 10]. The discovery of the Ten Tribes in America proved that this stage had been completed on the new continent [cite: 4, 6, 11, 20]. However, the missing link for completing the worldwide spread was the total absence of open and institutionalized Jews in England [cite: 4, 6, 11]. Rabbi Menasseh interpreted the French name of England, Angleterre (whose literal meaning is "the corner of the earth" or "the end of the earth"), as a prophetic hint that the Jews must settle there in order to complete the worldwide diaspora required to bring about the End of Days [cite: 4, 6, 9, 10, 20].
Cooperation with the Puritans and the Encounter at the Whitehall Conference
This messianic conception found a deep echo in England during the period of the republic (the Commonwealth) under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell [cite: 6]. At that time, intense millenarian and Sabbatarian expectations of the second coming of Jesus and the establishment of the thousand-year kingdom were widespread in England [cite: 6, 21, 22]. Prominent Puritan theologians, such as Thomas Goodwin (who held a premillennialist approach) and John Owen (who held a postmillennialist approach), agreed with Rabbi Menasseh that the return of the Jews and their ingathering anew were a necessary stage in the divine plan [cite: 10]. They believed that by admitting the Jews into England, the kingdom would merit divine blessing and become part of the cosmic process of redemption [cite: 10].
In 1655 Rabbi Menasseh arrived in London and presented to Cromwell the work "Humble Addresses" [cite: 4, 6, 9]. For the purpose of his entry into England, Rabbi Menasseh presented himself with the title "physician" [cite: 4]. In response to his petitions, Cromwell convened the "Whitehall Conference" in December 1655 to discuss permitting the return of the Jews [cite: 4, 6, 22, 23]. The conference met with fierce disagreements, which split into three main camps regarding the future status of the Jews in the kingdom [cite: 22].
Although the Whitehall Conference did not reach an official and binding decision, a decisive legal achievement was attained there: the senior jurists who took part in the conference determined that "there is no law that prevents the return of the Jews" [cite: 6, 22]. This determination was based on the historical fact that the expulsion of 1290 had been carried out by a royal decree of King Edward I and not by legislation of Parliament [cite: 6, 22]. This decision paved the way for the gradual and quiet return of Jews to England [cite: 6, 9, 22]. Cromwell himself granted individual Jews residence permits and rights of religious freedom, and even honored Rabbi Menasseh with a generous annual pension of 100 pounds sterling [cite: 6, 8].
The Printing Revolution in Amsterdam as an Instrument for Shaping Identity
The founding of the Hebrew printing house in Amsterdam in 1627 by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel was a formative event in the history of the Hebrew book [cite: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11]. The initial motive for founding the printing house stemmed from Rabbi Menasseh's precarious economic situation, as he sought an alternative source of livelihood to his poorly paid rabbinic post [cite: 4, 7, 8, 13]. However, this enterprise very quickly became a cultural and political instrument of the first order [cite: 4, 13].
The printing house was given the name "Emet me-Eretz Titzmach" (Truth Shall Spring from the Earth) and was the pioneer of the Hebrew book industry in Holland, which later became the leading publishing center of the entire Jewish world [cite: 4, 6, 13]. Through printing accurate editions of the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud and prayer books, Rabbi Menasseh succeeded in spreading Jewish culture both among the communities of the diaspora and among Christian scholars who sought to learn the holy tongue and its sources [cite: 7, 8, 13, 14]. The printing house served as a critical educational instrument for the reintegration of the anusim into Judaism, supplying them with halakhic literature and translations in the languages familiar to them, such as Spanish and Portuguese, and thereby played a key role in shaping modern Jewish identity in Western Europe [cite: 9, 13, 14].
The Artistic Partnership with Rembrandt and Explaining Judaism to the Christian World
Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel acted as an extraordinary cultural mediator between the Jewish world and the Christian world [cite: 3, 13]. He maintained friendships and extensive correspondence with Christian intellectuals, among them the statesman and thinker Hugo Grotius and the London millenarian theologian Petrus Serrarius [cite: 4, 7, 8, 11, 21]. His connections went beyond the bounds of literature into the world of the visual arts, especially through his working relationship with the renowned Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, who lived near him in Amsterdam [cite: 4, 5, 24, 25].
The Painting "Belshazzar's Feast" and the Hebrew Cipher
One of the most fascinating collaborations between the two found expression in Rembrandt's famous painting "Belshazzar's Feast" (which depicts the event from the Book of Daniel, chapter 5) [cite: 18, 25, 26]. In this painting the divine hand appears writing on the wall the words "Mene mene tekel upharsin" in Hebrew letters, but the order in which they were written prevented the sages of Babylon from deciphering them [cite: 18, 25]. The letters in the painting are arranged in vertical columns read from top to bottom and from right to left:
- מ
- מ
- ת
- ו
- ס
- נ
- נ
- ק
- פ
- י
- א
- א
- ל
- ר
- ן
This Talmudic solution for reading the cipher appeared in a book by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel published at that time, and historical research shows that Rembrandt turned directly to his neighbor the rabbi to receive from him precise guidance for writing the mysterious text [cite: 18, 25, 26]. However, Rembrandt made a slight error while painting: in an attempt to present the letter "final nun" (ן) as though it were still in the process of being written, he painted above it a short line that cut off its lower part, without realizing that this truncation changes the letter itself into another letter [cite: 24].
The Illustrations of the Book "Even Yekarah"
In 1655, on the eve of his departure for England, Rabbi Menasseh published his messianic book "Even Yekarah" (Piedra Gloriosa), which deals with the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue shattered by a stone that became a great mountain (Book of Daniel, chapter 2) [cite: 17, 18]. Rabbi Menasseh interpreted the stone as representing the Messiah, who is destined to shatter the four kingdoms and establish the eternal kingdom of Israel [cite: 18].
To illustrate the book, Rabbi Menasseh commissioned from Rembrandt four unique copper etchings depicting four biblical scenes: Jacob's dream (Jacob's ladder), David and Goliath, Nebuchadnezzar's shattered statue, and Daniel's vision of the four beasts [cite: 17, 19]. This commission is considered a pioneering and exceptional event in the history of art and of Judaism, in which an Orthodox rabbi commissioned a leading Christian artist to illustrate an internal messianic and theological work [cite: 17].
Despite this professional collaboration, modern art historians stress that one should beware of the myth that presents the two as close bosom friends [cite: 24, 25]. Rembrandt's famous portrait of 1636, called in later catalogues "Portrait of the Jew Menasseh ben Israel," is fiercely disputed; many scholars argue that it has no distinctly rabbinic or Jewish feature, and that a comparison with the official and authenticated portrait of Rabbi Menasseh painted by the Jewish artist Salom Italia reveals significant formal differences that cast doubt on the identity of the sitter [cite: 18, 24, 25].
His Universal Conception and His Attitude to the Righteous among the Nations
One of the most fascinating features of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel's teaching is the development of a universal and tolerant theological conception toward the nations of the world, which also served as an ideological basis for his diplomatic activity [cite: 9, 19]. In his book "Even Yekarah," Rabbi Menasseh discusses at length the status of righteous and upright gentiles [cite: 19].
Rabbi Menasseh determined that every human being who lives according to the laws of nature, behaves with honesty and justice, refrains from wronging his fellow and recognizes the Cause of causes (God) will merit divine reward in the World to Come, even if his ways of worship are different [cite: 19]. In support of this position he marshaled the saying of Rabbi Meir in the Talmud, according to which a gentile who engages in Torah is not inferior in rank to a high priest, and ruled that the righteous among the nations of the world ("the pious one among the nations of the world") are of exalted standing and will merit their share in the eternal reward [cite: 19].
In addition, Rabbi Menasseh developed a messianic theory according to which the King Messiah will receive with blessing and grace all those nations that did not enslave, persecute or oppress Israel during the exile [cite: 19]. This conception enabled him to present to the leaders of England and Holland a narrative according to which opening the gates of their countries to Jewish refugees and granting them patronage and protection are not merely a political or economic act, but a religious merit that will ensure these countries divine protection in the messianic era that is approaching [cite: 6, 9, 19].
Summary and Historical Legacy
Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel died on 20 November 1657 in Middelburg in Holland, shortly after returning from his prolonged mission in England [cite: 4, 6, 9, 11, 13]. He was brought to burial in the splendid Portuguese Jewish cemetery "Beth Haim" at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel near Amsterdam [cite: 4]. His death came while he was in economic distress and temporary disappointment, since he did not live to see the receipt of official, signed approval for the return of the Jews to England [cite: 13, 14].
Nevertheless, in historical perspective, his Torah and political work laid the foundations for far-reaching changes in the Jewish people in the modern era [cite: 3, 9, 21]:
- The diplomatic breakthrough in England: the Whitehall Conference's determination that there is no law prohibiting the entry of Jews opened the gates to the development of one of the most important and influential Jewish communities in the modern world [cite: 6, 9, 22].
- Establishing the Hebrew printing revolution: the founding of the printing house in Amsterdam brought about a cultural revolution that made Holland the capital of the Hebrew book, and helped thousands of anusim return to their original identity [cite: 4, 9, 13].
- Intellectual bridging between religious worlds: his explanatory and apologetic writing presented the depth of Jewish thought to the Christian world, and was a pioneer of the movement of religious and philosophical dialogue in Western Europe [cite: 3, 13, 14].
Although his halakhic and kabbalistic works were at times pushed to the margins of traditional study in later generations, the figure of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel has remained a model of a multidisciplinary leader, a wandering ambassador of his people, and a pioneering intellectual who knew how to harness the vision of redemption to diplomatic and scholarly activity that embraced the world [cite: 2, 3, 13].
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