The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life of the Present Jews throughout the World

MODENA, LEON.

J.L.

London

1650

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION . English interspersed with Hebrew

Roth, Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica, p. 391, no. 6.

First published in Italian under the title Historia de gli riti Hebraici (Paris, 1637) at the request of Sir Henry Wotton, English Ambassador to Venice, for presentation to King James I, this work is the first publication written by a Jew in modern times, outlining the practices of Judaism for a Gentile readership. See C. Roth, “Leon da Modena and His English Correspondents,” TJHSE, Vol. 17 (1951-1952), pp. 40-41; C. Roth, “Leone da Modena and England” in: Studies in Books and Booklore (1972) pp. 203-4; M.R. Cohen, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah (1988), p. 256, n.1; Dorit Raines, “Judaism in the Eyes of the Venetian Patriciate in the Time of Leon Modena” (Hebrew) in D. Malkiel (Ed.), The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World (2003) pp. 19-20.