Rabbi Yitzchak Uziel רבי יצחק עוזיאל
the haham of Amsterdam who taught Menasseh ben Israel
Early seventeenth-century Amsterdam was a peculiar city: here came refugees from Portugal whose grandfathers had been baptised under threat of death, and now their grandsons learned the alphabet of their faith again. Such people needed particular teachers—learned and patient.
Uziel came from Fez, of the Moroccan scholarly families, and brought what Amsterdam lacked: Hebrew grammar, poetry, the training of an eastern yeshiva. He headed the Neveh Shalom congregation and taught in it; his severity was remembered—they say he was quick of tongue and demanding—but his schooling gave the city a generation.
His chief mark is his students. Menasseh ben Israel, the future printer and envoy of Jewry to Cromwell, grew up under him; the Amsterdam learning for which the city would be famous began in that classroom.
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The records of the Neveh Shalom congregation in Amsterdam — head of the congregation and teacher; the circle of students
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Fez to Amsterdam; died 1622; the sources give no year of birth
Basis: Talmud and midrash.