Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca רבי יצחק אבוהב דה פונסיקה

Born on 1 February 1605 at Castro Daire in Portugal, baptised Simão da Fonseca; about 1612 the family moved to Amsterdam and returned to Judaism. He studied under R. Isaac Uziel alongside Menasseh ben Israel, and became hakham of the Beth Israel congregation at eighteen. He died at Amsterdam on 4 April 1693, aged eighty-eight.

From 1642 to 1654 he was at Recife in Dutch Brazil, hakham of Kahal Zur Israel — the first ordained rabbi to serve a congregation in the Americas. In the besieged city he wrote Zekher Asiti le-Nifle'ot El, the first Hebrew literary work of the New World. In September 1654 he returned to Amsterdam, and after Morteira's death in 1660 headed its rabbinate.

He made Lurianic Kabbalah readable at Amsterdam: in 1655 he translated into Hebrew the Spanish works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera — Sha'ar ha-Shamayim and Beit Elohim — and through those versions Lurianic ideas passed into Christian Hebraism as well.

In 1666 he was among the Amsterdam leaders who accepted Sabbatai Zevi as messiah; the community celebrated openly. He later drew back. This is the exact counterpoint to Jacob Sasportas, living in the same years and writing against.

In 1671 his sermon launched the subscription for a new building; and it was he who preached at the dedication of the Esnoga on 2 August 1675, his name woven into the chronogram of the inscription over the door.

Two corrections. He did not sign Spinoza's herem: the entry in the communal register bears no signatures at all, and the ma'amad only consulted the hakhamim. "First rabbi of the Americas" needs precision: he did not found the Recife community, which existed before him, and he did not serve alone — R. Moses Raphael de Aguilar was beside him. The correct form is: the first ordained rabbi appointed to a New World congregation.