Bidspirit auction | Rare missionary book—The Jew Turned

Rare missionary book—The Jew Turned Christian, Or the Cornerstone (Even LeRosh Pina), very rare! London 1678. - An early missionary essay describing the attempts of the Christian Church to act against the Jews by encouraging spiritual apostasy upon their return to England after the expulsion, by a converted Jew named John Jacob, ”a former Jew, but now a Christian.” Latin, with voweled Hebrew letters (quotes of verses and concepts from the Bible) – London 1678. Extremely rare! Was not found in libraries, and was not recorded in the bibliographic Mifal. [4] 36 p. 18cm Various stains, very good condition. New binding. Background: In the year 1667, the Jews returned to England after three centuries in which they were absent from it following their expulsion by King Edward I. Twenty years later, when the Jewish community began to become established, the Christian Church, which had not succeeded in maintaining the expulsion, tried a new way of acting against the Jews. In the background was the death of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi; after his death Christian activists published books which included the slander that the Messiah of the Jews had failed, and the Christian faith was the ”right” one, while exploiting the spiritual rift that gripped part of the Jewish people. Rabbi Menashe ben Yisrael was the one who fought to bring the Jews back from the forced conversion of Christianity to Judaism, and here we see that the spiritual calamities did not cease even after the return of the Jews to England.