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Jesurun

JESURUN (Jessurun, Yeshurun), descendants of a Marrano family who fled the Spanish Inquisition and settled mainly in Amsterdam and Hamburg. The Hamburg branch is best known for Isaac b. Abraham Ḥayyim *Jesurun (d. 1655), rabbi of Hamburg's Portuguese community. He was succeeded by ISAAC JESURUN, formerly of Venice, who was installed as ḥakham in the fall of 1656. During the same period JOSEPH JESURUN (d. 1660) headed Hamburg's Talmud Torah congregation. Joseph was the brother of ISAAC JESURUN of Ragusa (see *Dubrovnik), who was sentenced in the *blood libel of 1622 and freed when several of the judges who had condemned him died suddenly. SARAH (b. c. 1602), daughter of Amsterdam's renowned Reuel *Jesurun, married Moses Gideon Abudiente of Lisbon and lived in Hamburg. The name DAVID JESURUN appears on a list of Judaizers residing in Hamburg, which a spy for the Lisbon Inquisition drew up in 1644.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Roth, Marranos, 313; idem, in: ZGJD, 2 (1930), 228–36; H. Kellenbenz, Sephardim an der unteren Elbe (1958), index S.V. Jessurun.


Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.