From Portuguese New Christian to New Jew in Jerusalem: The Last Years of Alfonso Enriques (alias David Senior)

On August 1^st 1638 in Jerusalem, a former Portuguese merchant, David Senior wrote a lengthy Spanish letter addressed to David Ergas and Ysaco Sereno, his brothers-in-law who were living in Amsterdam and had requested information on daily life in Jerusalem. In the letter Senior reveals that he and his wife –who had arrived to Jerusalem the previous year- were in Jerusalem to spend their remaining years and be buried there. Who was David Senior, the author of the letter? Who were the addressees, David Ergas and Ysaco Sereno? More importantly, what is the significance of this letter that merits its study? What does it add to our knowledge of Jewish daily life in Jerusalem in the third decade of the seventeenth century? This presentation is dedicated to the exploration of these questions. The letter, or perhaps more precisely, a copy of it, has been preserved at the Staats-und Universitatsbibliothek in Hamburg (MS. Nr. 172, Levy 75, acc.1906/11353), bounded together with a copy of another letter written around 1626 by Rabbi Immanuel Aboab that was studied by Cecil Roth in the 1930s.