(1604-57)
Dutch rabbi. Born a marrano in Madeira, he was taken to Amsterdam as a child. He succeeded Isaac Uziel as preacher to the Neveh Shalom congregation in 1622. In 1626 he founded the earliest Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam and proceeded to publish numerous works in Hebrew, Spanish and Latin. He repre-sented Jewish scholarship in the Christian world, corresponded with various gentile scholars, and was a friend of Grotius and Rembrandt. In 1655 he presented a petition to Oliver Cromwell to allow the Jews to return to England.
Dictionary of Jewish Biography. Dan Cohn-Sherbok.