BELILHOS, DANIEL. Sermoes Pregados

Two rare Portuguese sermons by Rabbi Daniel Belilhos, one delivered to the memory of his father- in-law Haham Isaac Aboab de Fonseca (1605-1693) one-time Rabbi in Recife, Brazil; the other sermon, on human freedom and Divine obedience. Daniel Belilhos who studied under such rabbis as Haham Aboab da Fonseca and Haham Moses Raphael de Aguilar, was a teacher in the Ets Haim Rabbinical Seminary of the Portuguese Jewish congregation of Amsterdam. Belilhos is known to have had profound knowledge of Biblical and rabbinical literature, among his compositions extant are laudatory poems to the Hebrew drama Pardes Shoshanim by Joseph Penso de la Vega (1673), as well poems to the Spanish sermons of Abraham Gómez de Silveira (1677). The poet and historiographer Daniel Levi de Barrios included a Hebrew poem of Belilhos in his Triumpho del Govierno Popular and provided it with a Spanish translation. A more voluminous poetical work by Belilhos, describing the life of Adam in Paradise, is reputed to be extant in manuscript. Belilhos was also the rabbinical head of the charitable societies Maskil el-Dal and Temime Darek. His reputation in the community is further underscored by the fact that together with Rabbi Solomon Aylion and Rabbi Solomon de Oliveira, he was elected the third rabbi of the congregation’s Bet Din. See David Franco Mendes. Memórias do estabelecimento e progresso dos judeos portuguezes e espanhoes nesta famosa cidade de Amsterdam [1772], eds. L. Fuks, R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld y B.N. Teensma (Assen: 1975; special issue of Studia Rosenthaliana, 11). No copy in Jewish National and University Library, nor in Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati.