A Rabbi in Letters: The Multi-Genre writings of Rabbi Samuel Aboab and the Early Modern Mediterranean

Abstract

This dissertation examines the life and writings of Rabbi Samuel Aboab (1610–1694). It positions Aboab—from his birth into a powerful converso family in Antwerp to his four-decade tenure as rabbi of the wealthy Portuguese community in Venice—as a gateway to broader questions relating to converso identity, communication, the formation of a rabbinic “Republic of Letters," and the evolving contours of rabbinic authority during the early modern period. Aboab served for nearly six decades as a rabbi in Verona and Venice, authored close to four hundred halakhic responsa, and maintained a wide network of rabbinic correspondence across Italy and the Mediterranean. This study constitutes the first sustained scholarly engagement with his life and works. In reconstructing his biography with particular attention to his converso origins and rabbinic trajectory, our study complicates prevailing narratives of post-converso religious identity and integration. The dissertation analyzes Aboab’s responsa and employs network mapping to reconstruct his role in a rabbinic “Republic of Letters," and explores how this communications network sustained rabbinic careers and reinforced rabbinic authority across geographic boundaries. This study also offers the first systematic justification for the attribution of the Sefer ha-Zikhronot to Aboab. It defines the work as Aboab’s guide for rabbinic leadership and situates it within the broader context of shifting models of rabbinic authority, thus contributing a new perspective to the study of the early modern rabbinate. Finally, the dissertation examines Aboab’s commitment to the Jewish religious life in the land of Israel, focusing on his stewardship of the Beit Midrash Aboab in Safed, originally established by his father, Abraham Aboab. It explores the spiritual and religious motivations that may have inspired diasporic, and particularly Portuguese, Jews to engage with the Jewish communities in the land