From Christianity to Judaism

Isaac Orobio de Castro, acrypto-Jew from Portugal, was one of the most prominent intellectual figures ofthe Sephardi Diaspora in the seventeenth century. After studying medicine andtheology in Spain, and having pursued a distinguished medical career, he wasarrested by the Spanish Inquisition for practising Judaism, tortured, tired,and imprisoned. He subsequently emigrated to France and became a professor ofmedicine at the University of Toulouse before openly professing his Judaism andgoing to Amsterdam where he joined the thriving Portuguese Jewish community.Amsterdam was then a city of great cultural creativity and religious pluralismwhere Orobio found open to him the world of religious thinkers and learnedscholars. In this atmosphere he flourished and became an outstanding spokesmanand apologist for the Jewish community. He engaged in controversy with Juan dePrado and Baruch Spinoza, who were both excommunicated by the Portuguese Jewishcommunity, as well as with Christian theologians of various sects anddenominations, including Philip van Limborch.This fascinatingbiography of Orobio sheds light on the complex life of a unique Jewishcommunity of former Christians who had openly returned to Judaism. It focuseson the particular dilemmas of the converts, their attempts to establishboundaries between their Christian past and their new identity, their internal conflicts,and their ability to create new forms of Jewish life and expression.