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Hakham Jacob Sasportas and the Former Conversos

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Hakham Jacob Sasportas and the Former Conversos STUDIA ROSENTHALIANA 44 (2012), 149-172 doi: 10.2143/SR.44.0.2189614 Hakham Jacob Sasportas and the Former Conversos MATT GOLDISH AKHAM JACOB SASPORTAS (1610-1698) is best known for his battle H against the followers of the messiah Shabbatai Zvi in 1665-66, but he was an important figure for many other reasons as well. Sasportas was, for example, the only rabbi to serve (or at least live) in all the major centers of the Western Sephardi diaspora: Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, and Livorno. Before he ever arrived in Europe he had a distinguished rabbinic career in North Africa. He left behind important responsa and letters which throw light on a number of historical topics. One of these is the encounter between the traditional rabbinate and the cadre of for- mer conversos who escaped the Iberian Peninsula to create new lives as Jews in Western Europe. Yosef Kaplan has made the exploration of these communities the center of his scholarly endeavors for four decades. He has demonstrated that the communities of Western Sephardim looked like other Sephardic communities but operated very differently under the surface. Sasportas was a thoroughly traditional rabbi who took the respect of the rabbinate and rabbinic tradition with the utmost serious- ness. What happened when such a figure encountered communities of people who had grown up as Christians and subsequently created their own version of a Jewish community as they saw fit? Life Sasportas’s biography is an important key to many aspects of his activi- ties and attitudes. He came from one of the most respected and influen- tial Jewish families in North Africa. He was, as he never tires of recalling, a direct descendent of the medieval kabbalist Moses Nahmanides in the 150 MATT GOLDISH eleventh generation.1 The Sasportas family had emigrated from Aragon around 1395-96, apparently as a result of the anti-Jewish disturbances there. They moved to Morocco, where many family members occupied important political and leadership positions. Their diplomatic and intel- ligence services for the government can be traced back to at least 1531. They produced outstanding scholars as well.2 Jacob Sasportas was born at Oran in 1610. Little is known of his education, but he must have been something of a wunderkind as he was a member of the Tlemcen rabbinical court already in 1629 at the age of eighteen. In 1634 he was promoted to chief judge of that court, whose jurisdiction extended to six other major cities of Jewish settlement in the vicinity. Sasportas’s fortunes waned when, around 1647, he was jailed by the king of Tlemcen. He was apparently implicated in an embezzlement scandal, indicating that he worked for the government as a diplomat or financier, as had many members of his family. He states that his incarceration resulted from some sort of conspiracy, that he was tortured, and that what was wanted of him was money he did not have in his possession.3 1. The historian and poet Daniel Levi de Barrios, a contemporary and friend of Sasportas, whose background in Jewish tradition was not strong, erroneously traces Sasportas’s lineage in one passage to Maimonides rather than Nahmanides (Rambam rather than Ramban), an error that was copied in the next century by the historian David Franco Mendes. See Daniel Levi de Barrios, Triumpho del govierno popular (Amsterdam 1683), ‘Historia Universal Iudayca’, p. 98; Franco Mendes, Memorias do Estabelecimento e progresso dos judeus portuguezes e espanhoes nesta famosa cidade de Amsterdam, eds L. Fuks, R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld and B.N. Teensma, in Os Judeus Portugueses em Amesterdão, ed. M. Cadafaz de Matos and H.P. Salomon (Lisbon 1990; = Monumenta Iudaica Portucalensia I; = Studia Rosenthaliana 9:2 [July 1975]), p. 58 and note c. there. 2. Modern historians appear to have derived their knowledge of the Sasportas family back- ground largely from De Barrios, Triumpho, p. 14-26 and 98-99. See, e.g. Isaiah Tishby, ‘Intro- duction to Jacob Sasportas’, in Zizat novel Zvi (Jerusalem 1954), p. 24-26 (Hebrew pagination); H.Z. Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2 (Leiden 1981), p. 56, 74. For excellent background see Jean Frédéric Schaub, Les juifs du roi d’Espagne: Oran 1509-1669 (Paris 1999), ch. 2. Thanks to Prof. Yaacob Dweck for this reference. For the fate of another famous rabbinic family whose history looks very similar to that of the Sasportas family, see Jaume Riera, ‘On the Fate of Rabbi Isaac bar Sheshet (Rivash) during the Persecutions of 1391’, Sefunot 17 (1983), p. 11-20 (in Hebrew). Two Hebrew works on Sasportas from the Orthodox world contain some interesting refer- ences but also numerous errors, and should be used with great caution: Elie Moyal, Rabbi Yaacob Sasportas (Jerusalem 1992); and Isaac Sasportas, Moshi’an shel Yisra’el: ha-ro’eh me-Hamburg (Tifrah 2005). 3. Jacob Sasportas, She’elot u-teshuvot ohel Ya‘akov (Amsterdam 1737; reprint Jerusalem 1976), fol. 34r, 45r; idem, Zizat novel Zvi, p. 246; idem, Closing Remarks in Menasseh ben Israel, Nishmat Hayyim (Amsterdam 1652), n/p; Abraham Sasportas, Preface to Ohel Ya’akov, p. vi; Hirschberg, History, p. 67. HAKHAM JACOB SASPORTAS AND THE FORMER CONVERSOS 151 Having managed to secure his freedom, Sasportas came for the first time to Amsterdam, where he arrived in 1650-51 and was well received.4 He began teaching there and also took up work as a proofreader for his new and esteemed friend, Hakham Menasseh ben Israel. Over the next three years he proofread Menasseh’s Nishmat hayyim (1652; to which he appended a personal note and poem) among other works. He also published several items himself: Eleh divrei R. Ya’akov Sasportas…(1652), a eulogy for his young student who had died;5 Toledot Ya’akov, an index to the Palestinian Talmud (1652); and Heichal ha-kodesh of Hakham Moshe Elbaz, a mystical commentary on the prayers, to which Sasportas added his own lengthy preface entitled Penei heichal (1653).6 Sasportas also performed political tasks in Amsterdam. He helped Joseph Toledano translate diplomatic notes from Arabic into Spanish, and was referred to by Thomas Coenen, the Dutch Protestant clergyman in Smyrna, as the ‘resident minister of the Emperor of Morocco in Holland.’7 Many historians have mistakenly asserted that in this period Saspor- tas accompanied his friend, Menasseh ben Israel, on Menasseh’s famous mission to Oliver Cromwell in London. Cecil Roth has demonstrated that this never occurred and has located the source of the error.8 4. Franco Mendes makes a series of errors about Sasportas’s age at the time of his arrival and his death, as well as the date of his arrival. He does, however, give us the important information that in March of 1653 Sasportas borrowed money from the Amsterdam community’s fund for redeeming captives in order to free his wife and children who were still in the sultan’s prison. See Franco Mendes, Memorias, p. 54-55, 58-59, 160 n. 22. 5. Mercado was also eulogized by Hakham Saul Levi Morera, and his eulogy was also published, presumably by a wealthy relative of the deceased student. See Moritz Steinschneider, Catalogus Libro- rum Hebraeorum (Berolini 1852-1860), column 2509, entry 7100 no. 2. That eulogy is now available in a full English translation based on Morteira’s autograph manuscript in Marc Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of ‘New Jews’ (Cincinnati 2005), p. 536-543. 6. Gershom Scholem points out that Sasportas’s commentary is deeply kabbalistic, but it shows Sasportas to have been a Cordoverian rather than a Lurianic kabbalist. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, the Mystical Messiah (Princeton 1973), p. 570-71. 7. See Hirschberg, History, p. 67, 263-264 and note 32 there. The translations may in fact refer to Isaac rather than Jacob Sasportas but this is unclear. See also Sasportas, ‘Closing Remarks’; Abraham Sasportas, ‘Preface’, p. vi; Franco Mendes, Memorias, p. 58; Alfredo Toaff, ‘The Contro- versy Between R. Sasportas and the Jewish Community in Leghorn (1681)’, Sefunot 9 (1965), p. 180 (in Hebrew). Heikhal ha-kodesh (t/p and fol. 6v) and Eleh divrei (fol. 1r) both contain references to community members who financed their respective publications. In a letter from Sasportas to Livorno published by Toaff (‘Controversy’, p. 180) he claims that he was able to live off the royalties from the books he published in Amsterdam for many years. 8. Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (Philadelphia 1945), p. 81, 337, 339; idem, ‘New Light on the Resettlement’, Jewish Historical Society of England Transactions 11 (1924-1927), p. 119 152 MATT GOLDISH It appears that Sasportas remained in Amsterdam for several years. He also spent some time in Rotterdam, where he directed the branch campus of the Pinto yeshivah together with his friend, Hakham Josiah (Iosiahu) Pardo.9 Sasportas returned to Morocco in 1659, where he was called upon to perform a diplomatic mission for the Moroccan govern- ment. The nature of this assignment is somewhat unclear. De Barrios claims that Sasportas was sent by Marabout Ben Bakr of Salé to obtain relief from the queen regent against an Arab siege of the city. Abraham Sasportas, on the other hand, states that his father was sent by the king of Marrakesh to the king of Spain on unspecified business. Either way, they agree that Sasportas undertook an important mission at this time and that it was successful. The length of the mission is also unclear, but after it was completed Sasportas was prevailed upon to remain for some time in Morocco as a member of the rabbinical court, until war and famine in the region drove him to return to Amsterdam.
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