MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL

v.p.

Amsterdam

1698

Mikveh Yisrael. Title within typographical border. ff. 64 (of 66), ff.65-6 provided in manuscript. [Vinograd, Amsterdam 660; Fuks, Amsterdam 527; Silva Rosa 57-d]. Amsterdam, Asher Anshel & Partners, 1698. * BENJAMIN OF TUDELA. Masa’oth shel Rabi Benyamin [travel]. ff. 27. [Vinograd, Amsterdam 659; Fuks, Amsterdam 553]. Amsterdam, Caspar Steen, 1698.

FIRST HEBREW EDITION of Mikveh Yisrael, Menasseh ben Israel’s treatise on the Lost Ten Tribes and the related revelations of Antonio Montesinos (Aaron Levi). An important work that laid the groundwork toward the re-Admission of the Jews to England in 1656. While travelling in South America, Montesinos had met a race of Brazilian tribesmen who recited the Shema, practiced Jewish ritual and claimed to be the lost tribe of Reuben. Capitalizing on the the Puritan belief that the discovery of these exotic people was a confirmation of the prophecy that the Millennium would come when the Jews dispersed to all the ends of the earth, Menasseh ben Israel included Antonio Montesinos revelations in his land-mark treatise addressed to the English Parliment in 1650. Montesinos’ affidavit to Menasseh ben Israel was similarly taken as conclusive by Thomas Thorowgood in his work, Jewes in America (see Lot 129). See J.H. Coppenhagen no. 640 and L. M. Friedman, Jewish Pioneers and Patriots (1942) pp. 156-7.