Isaac Orobio de Castro, a
crypto-Jew from Portugal, was one of the most prominent intellectual figures of
the Sephardi Diaspora in the seventeenth century. After studying medicine and
theology in Spain, and having pursued a distinguished medical career, he was
arrested by the Spanish Inquisition for practising Judaism, tortured, tired,
and imprisoned. He subsequently emigrated to France and became a professor of
medicine at the University of Toulouse before openly professing his Judaism and
going to Amsterdam where he joined the thriving Portuguese Jewish community.
Amsterdam was then a city of great cultural creativity and religious pluralism
where Orobio found open to him the world of religious thinkers and learned
scholars. In this atmosphere he flourished and became an outstanding spokesman
and apologist for the Jewish community. He engaged in controversy with Juan de
Prado and Baruch Spinoza, who were both excommunicated by the Portuguese Jewish
community, as well as with Christian theologians of various sects and
denominations, including Philip van Limborch.





This fascinating
biography of Orobio sheds light on the complex life of a unique Jewish
community of former Christians who had openly returned to Judaism. It focuses
on the particular dilemmas of the converts, their attempts to establish
boundaries between their Christian past and their new identity, their internal conflicts,
and their ability to create new forms of Jewish life and expression.