This is the first annotated edition and translation from Spanish into English of Preguntas que hizo un clérigo de Ruan de Francia a las cuales respondió el excelente y eminentísimo señor hacham Saul Levi Mortera (Questions by a Christian Cleric from Rouen, France, and Answers by the Excellent, Eminent, and Wise Saul Levi Mortera), which was written in the 1640s by the Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam, Saul Levi Mortera.Mortera was the spiritual leader of a community of conversos, refugees from inquisitorial Iberia who settled in Amsterdam to practise Judaism openly, but who lacked religious training and held Catholicized crypto-Jewish beliefs. Mortera’s text merges philosophy with theology to persuade conversos to abandon those Catholicized crypto-Jewish beliefs and adhere to rabbinic Judaism. The book includes a critical introduction to the work alongside the translation and modernized edition of the Spanish text.
