The Rabbi and the Rebels
A Pamphlet on the Ḥerem by Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5348820 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anne Oravetz Albert (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 171-191 |
| Publication date | 2014-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Jewish Quarterly Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-6682 • E-ISSN: 1553-0604 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jqr.2014.0011 |
| OpenAlex | W2057565484 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 1 |
Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, the head rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, published a pamphlet in 1680 that addressed the laws of the herem. This Exhortation, as he called it, urged his readers to restore a general sense of gravity to the ban, arguing more specifically that lay leaders could legally impose a ban without a rabbi's approval, and that the herem was deeply connected to the foundations of communal authority, which he viewed as inviolable. His halakhic discussion engaged with a series of claims made by his unnamed interlocutors, who apparently rejected the authority of the Mahamad on practical and theoretical grounds. Aboab's previously unstudied work reveals a new, ideological dimension of a series of disputes that are known to have disturbed this Sephardi community in the 1670s, and complicates the widely held view that the early modern period was characterized by a decline in rabbinic authority alongside the rise of strongly lay-led communities
Ethnology · Judaism · Political science · Portuguese · Professionalization · Sociology · Theology · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy · Religious studies · Sephardic Jews and Inquisition Studies
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |