Writings
Menasseh ben Israel was the author of many works. His major work Nishmat Hayim is a treatise in Hebrew on the Jewish concept of reincarnation of souls, published by his son Samuel six years before they both died. Some are of the opinion that he studied kabbalah with Abraham Cohen de Herrera, a disciple of Israel Saruk. This would explain his amazing familiarity with the method of Isaac Luria.
His other works include:
- De termino vitae written in Latin 1639, translated into English by Thomas Pocock (London, 1709)
- Conciliator translated by Elias Haim Lindo
- De Creatione Problemata, in Spanish, Amsterdam 1635.
- De Resurrectione Mortuorum, Book III 1636 - written originally in Spanish but later translated into Latin, 1636
- De la Fragilidad Humana (On Human Frailty) (1642)
- Nishmat Hayyim Hebrew
- a ritual compendium Thesouros dos dinim.
- Piedra gloriosa - with four engraved etchings by his friend Rembrandt, who also painted his portrait. These are preserved in the British Museum.
- Vindiciae Judaeorum, Or, A Letter in Answer to Certain Questions Propounded by a Nobel and Learned Gentleman: Touching the Reproaches Cast on the Nation of the Jews ; Wherein All Objections are Candidly, and Yet Fully Clear'd. Amsterdam 1656.
Other works can be found in the Biblioteca Nacional – Rio de Janeiro/Brazil per example:
- Orden de las oraciones del mes, con lo mes necessario y obligatorio de las tres fiestas del año. Como tambien lo que toca a los ayunos, Hanucah, y Purim: con sus advertencias y notas para mas facilidad, y clareza. Industria y despeza de Menasseh ben Israel
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Famous quotes containing the word writings:
“In this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man’s writings admit of more than one interpretation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.””
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)