Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

June 21, 2024

A 16th-Century Look at the Mystery of Jewish Endurance

“A Jew I am, and a Jew will I remain.”

Reflecting on the endurance of the Jewish people, Daniel B. Schwartz turns to a 16th-century work of Jewish history called Shevet Yehudah (“The Scepter of Judah”), written by Solomon ibn Verga, a Portuguese converso who returned to Judaism and settled in the Ottoman empire. One section recounts the story of a “Job-like” Jewish exile who finds himself shipwrecked and alone in a remote wilderness, his family dead. The man offers a defiant prayer:

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