Early Life
Monis was born into a family of former Portuguese conversos in Italy or the Barbary States, and was educated at Jewish academies in Livorno, Italy and Amsterdam. Monis read for Jewish congregations in Jamaica and New York, and in roughly 1715, opened a small store in New York City, where he also began a second career teaching Hebrew to Jews and Christians, as well as a pastime of conducting discussions of theological topics, such as Kabbalah and the Holy Trinity with leading Christian authorities. On February 28 of the following year, Monis was declared a freeman of the city. Around 1720, he left the established Jewish community of New York and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where very few Jews lived at the time.
Read more about this topic: Judah Monis
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