The ISAS Library
Our Library’s collection comprises a wide range of material, including scholarly works on crypto-Judaism, Sefardi and Anousim identity and history, music DVDs and documentaries, as well as biographies and historical fiction about Anousim. We have records from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Inquisitions. Our collection has an emphasis on communities in Spain, the Balearic Islands, Portugal, Italy, Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, North America, and the Mashadi crypto-Jews of Iran.
If you would like an individual or group tour of the Library, please contact salomonb@netanya.ac.il
Notable Volumes in our Collection
Genealogia Hebraica, Portugal e Gibraltar, Sécs. XVII a XX, Volumes I-V, José MariaAbecassis
These five volumes are a treasure trove of meticulously researched studies of the families who arrived in Portugal in the early nineteenth century after the Inquisition was abolished (1821), as well as families in Gibraltar, whose Jewish community is of great antiquity. For each name entry, the author lists alternate forms of the name, followed by transcriptions of the documents in which the name is found, with copious notes. The set includes numerous extended family trees as well as illustrations. Volume V is composed of indexes and addenda (published 2009-2010; in Portuguese).
Inquisição: Prisioneiros do Brasil, Séculos XVI a XIX, 2nd ed., Anita Waingort Novinsky
The third volume of Dr. Novinsky’s series on the Portuguese Inquisition, it comprises an alphabetical listing of 1,076 prisoners, most of them Conversos accused of Judaizing, who were sent from Brazil to Lisbon to stand trial by the Inquisition. The entry for each individual includes origin, crime accused of, the sentence and whether it was carried out, as well as other observations. The introduction includes demographic tables about the prisoners (published 2009; in Portuguese).
The Legacy of Rabi Abraham Senior, Cândido Pinheiro Koren de Lima, et al
The Foundation Ana Lima in Brazil was conducting projects to digitize all the vital records of northeastern Brazil and to document the colonization process there, how the families who arrived there helped shape Northeastern colonial society. From this huge database of over 300,000 names they came across the name of Abraham Senior, Court rabbi of Castile and royal tax-farmer-in-chief. After his forced conversion in Spain on 15 June 1492, he took the surname Coronel. This book records his genetic heritage in Northeastern Brazil, and includes over 100 branches of the family tree. Includes onomastic index and bibliography (2008, in English and Portuguese).
Recent Aquisitions
The following items were recently purchased thanks to the Book Fund established by the Davis Family Charitable Foundation (UK):
Hispania Judaica (journal) Vols. 1-10.
Expulsion and Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews (DVD).
Benabu, Isaac, ed. Circa 1492: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Colloquium. Litterae Judaeorum in Terra Hispanica.
Ben-Ur, Aviva and Rachel Frankel. Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries Synagogues of Suriname: Essays.
Ben-Ur, Aviva and Rachel Frankel. Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs.
Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie. Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam.
Fuks-Mansfeld, R.G., et al eds. The History of the Jews in the Netherlands.
Maccoby, Hyam. Judaism on Trial: Jewish–Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages.
Oelman, Timothy, ed. Marrano Poets of the Seventeenth Century: An Anthology of the Poetry of Joao Pinto Delgado, Antonio Enriquez Gomez and Miguel de Barrios.
Orfali, Moises and Yom Tov Assis, eds. Portuguese Jewry at the Stake (Hebrew).
Schorsch, Jonathan. Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century.
Singerman, Robert. Portuguese and Spanish Jewry: a Classified Bibliography.
Wachtel, Nathan. The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths.
Donate your Books to the ISAS Collection
The ISAS strives to insure that our Library holds the material important to our research. We will gladly accept books or other materials on Sefardic history, Anousim, Jewish genealogy or onomastics, or primary/secondary source material, in any language. If you would like to donate a book, make a donation to the Book Fund, or bequeath your collection to the Library, please contact: