Notes: Cited in Yosef Kaplan "Qelitatam shel gerim ba-kehilah ha-portugalit bi-Amsterdam ba-Meah ha-17: Parshat Lorenzo Escuerdo" in Proceedings of the Seventh World Jewish Congress (Jerusalem, 1981), vol. 4: 100

Orobio de Castro (himself a former converso) was heavily involved in the project of encouraging conversos to return to their ancestral faith in seventeeth century Amsterdam. The distinction made in this passage between "the seed of Abraham and Children of Israel" on the one hand, and Gentiles who recognize the God of Truth, on the other, illuminates two broad historical developments:

1. It reflects the emergence of a biological (dare I say, "racial?") definition of Jewishness among conversos and former conversos, a legacy of Iberian rhetoric about "limpieza de sangre."
2. It may be seen as evincing Jewish anxieties about accepting Old Christians as converts to Judaism at a time when religious identities were particularly labile. [See Introduction to Kol Sakhal.]

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