RT Article
T1 Jacob Ṣemaḥ, Humanist
JF European journal of jewish studies
VO 16
IS 1
SP 93
OP 116
A1 Chajes, J. H. 1965-
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1789483379
AB Jacob Ṣemaḥ (ca. 1578–1667), an erudite physician-kabbalist, was raised amongst the conversos of Viana de Caminha in northwest Portugal. He fled the country in his mid-thirties to live openly as a Jew, arriving first in Salonica. Ṣemaḥ was responsible for the consolidation of the Lurianic literary corpus in the second third of the seventeenth century. His contribution, I argue, should be situated in the broader context of a scholarly curriculum vitae that began decades before his flight from Portugal, as Ṣemaḥ embraced Jewish life as a humanist. Coupled with his natural gifts and genius, Ṣemaḥ’s humanist education served him remarkably well in his new life. The interesting question is therefore not “how might he have learned Torah in Portugal” but “how did his Portuguese educational background affect—indeed, effect may be the more apt term—his Jewish scholarship?”
K1 converso
K1 Humanism
K1 Lurianic Kabbalah
K1 Jacob Ṣemaḥ
DO 10.1163/1872471X-bja10032