Isaac Aboab da Fonseca

• The life and works of Chacham Isack Aboab da Fonseca.

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Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (or Isaak Aboab Foonseca) (February 1, 1605 – April 4, 1693) was a rabbi, scholar, kabbalist and writer. In 1656, he was one of several elders within the Portuguese-Israelite community in the Netherlands who excommunicated Baruch Spinoza for the statements this philosopher made concerning the nature of God.

Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was born in the Portuguese town of Castro Daire as Simão da Fonseca. His parents were Marranos, Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity. Although the family had ostensibly converted to Christianity, this did not put an end to local antisemitic suspicions.

When Isaac was seven, the family moved to Amsterdam. From that moment on, the family "reconverted" back to Judaism, and Isaac was raised Jewish from that moment on. Together with Manasseh ben Israel, he was given lessons by the scholar Isaac Uziel.

At the age of eighteen, Isaac was appointed rabbi (chacham) for Beth Israel, one of three Sephardic communities which existed at that point in Amsterdam.

In 1642, Aboab da Fonseca was appointed rabbi at Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in the then Dutch colony of Pernambuco (Recife), Brazil, a city which was occupied by the Dutch in 1624 (see Dutch Brazil, Jews in Pernambuco). ). Most of the European inhabitants of the town after the Dutch occupation were Sephardic Jews, originally from Portugal, but who had first emigrated to Amsterdam due to persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition. They then helped colonize this new Dutch colony at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

By becoming the rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community in Recife, Aboab da Fonseca was also probably the first appointed rabbi of the Americas. Kahal Zur Israel congregation here had a synagogue, a mikveh and a yeshiva as well. Still during Fonseca's tenure as rabbi in Pernambuco, the Portuguese re-occupied the capital of Recife in 1654, after a struggle of nine years. Fonseca then managed to return to Amsterdam after the loss of the new colony to the Portuguese. Some members of his community immigrated to North America and were among the founders of New York City.

Back in Amsterdam, Aboab da Fonseca was appointed Chief Rabbi for the Sephardic community. In 1656, he was one of several scholars who excommunicated the famous philosopher Baruch Spinoza. During the reign of Aboab da Fonseca, the community flourished; the Portuguese synagogue (the Esnoga) was inaugurated on August 2, 1675 (10 Av 5435).

Isaac Aboab da Fonseca died in Amsterdam on April 4, 1693, at the age of eighty-eight .

Legacy

In 2007, the Jerusalem Institute (Machon Yerushalaim) in Israel published a book about Rabbi Fonseca's works, including the author's expositions about the community of Recife at that time. The book is called Chachamei Recife V'Amsterdam, or The Sages of Recife and Amsterdam.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Fonseca.html

Isaac Aboab de Fonseca
(1605 - 1693)

In 1642, when the 600 Jews of Recife (Pernambuco), Brazil, felt secure enough to establish a synagogue and worship openly, they summoned Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca of Amsterdam, Holland, to serve as their first hocham (spiritual leader). Aboab de Fonseca became, thereby, the first congregational rabbi in the New World.

When the Portuguese explorer Cabral landed in Brazil in 1500, he was accompanied by at least one person of Jewish birth who had been captured in India and forcibly baptised. Portuguese conversos continued to settle in Brazil for more than a century. Then, in 1630, the Netherlands drove the Portuguese out of the Pernambuco region.

When the Portuguese military departed from Recife and its environs the representatives of the Holy Inquisition left with them. Some of the Portuguese conversos who remained behind took the opportunity to openly profess their Judaism. When additional Jews from Amsterdam arrived in Recife, the Jewish community, estimated to be as large as 5,000 individuals, organized congregation Kahal Kodesh Zur Yisroel. Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca — known to his followers simply as Aboab — served this congregation through the best and worst of times.

Born in Portugal in 1605, Rabbi Aboab was a rabbinic prodigy: even in his teens, he was considered highly learned, a charismatic speaker and a respected teacher. When Aboab was a child, his parents fled Portugal for France and then Amsterdam, where the young boy became a student of the great hocham Isaac Uzziel. Aboab possessed a powerful intellect and writing skills. Historian Leon Kayserling summarized Aboab’s contributions by calling him "an excellent Hebrew poet who left us magnificently enduring works," including several translations of Hebrew kabbalistic writings into Spanish, and vice versa.

At age 21, Aboab was called to the pulpit of Amsterdam’s Congregation Bet Israel, one of three Jewish synagogues in the city. In 1639, the three congregations merged, and Aboab shared the role of hocham. When he chose to relocate to Recife in 1642, his departure was greeted with sadness.

For the first four years under Aboab’s leadership, Recife’s congregation Kahal Kodesh Zur Yisroel thrived in an atmosphere of religious toleration characteristic of the 17th century Dutch. The Portuguese, however, had retained control of the Bahia region of Brazil and never ceased longing to recapture Pernambuco. In 1645, a Portuguese Jesuit, Joam Fernandes Vieyra, convinced the King of Portugal to regain Recife because "that city is chiefly inhabited by Jews, most of whom were originally fugitives from Portugal." Vieyra continued, "They have their open synagogues there, to the scandal of Christianity. For the honor of the faith, therefore, the Portuguese ought to risk their lives and their property in putting down such an abomination."

In 1646, Vieyra and his army attacked Recife. Hoping to divide and conquer, Vieyra offered the city’s Jews protection on the condition that they not participate in the battle. The Jewish community unanimously rejected his offer and took up arms with their Dutch comrades.

The Portuguese besieged Recife off and on for a total of nine years, unable to defeat the inhabitants yet unwilling to retreat. During this prolonged ordeal, Recife’s Jews gave their food, property and lives in defense of their freedom. Throughout the siege, Aboab encouraged all the resisters—Jewish and Dutch alike—and led prayers asking God to protect the colonists from their enemies.

Recife held out through nine years of deprivation. In a poem he later wrote, Aboab described his congregation’s ordeal: "Many of the Jewish immigrants were killed by the enemy; many died of starvation. Those who were accustomed to delicacies were glad to be able to satisfy their hunger with dry bread; soon they could not obtain even this. They were in want of everything and were preserved alive as if by a miracle." It is the oldest known Hebrew text written in America that has survived to the present day.

In 1654, the Dutch garrison could no longer hold out and the governor agreed to surrender. To their credit, the Dutch insisted that the Portuguese not slaughter the Jewish inhabitants as a condition of surrender. The Portuguese honored this proviso but demanded that the Jews leave Brazil. Some departed for Surinam, some for Guadeloupe, but a majority wished to return to Amsterdam. (One such boatload of 24 Amsterdam-bound passengers was accosted by pirates and robbed, then blown off course and finally landed in New Amsterdam — the first Jews to settle in North America.) Aboab, abandoning the place he had called home for 13 years, traveled with those who successfully returned to Amsterdam.

Held in high esteem by his former Amsterdam congregants, Aboab was reappointed as hocham in the synagogue and made teacher in the city’s talmud torah, principal of its yeshiva and member of the city’s bet din, or rabbinic court. He died in 1693 at the age of 88, having served the Jewish community of Amsterdam for 50 years after his return from Recife. In his latter years a man of letters, teaching and contemplation, the adventuresome Isaac Aboab de Fonseca had been, from 1642 to 1654, America’s first rabbi, first Hebrew poet and a man who risked his life for Jewish religious freedom.

Sources: American Jewish Historical Society

Fonte: "A presença oculta - Genealogia, Identidade e Cultura Cristã-nova brasileira nos séculos XIX e XX"de Paulo Valadares, Fundação Lima / Fortaleza-Ce, ano 2007.