Manasseh was neither a first-rate _Talmudical_ authority, nor the principal of a great _Rabbinical_ school, nor a celebrated and officially recognized leader of _Rabbis_. He achieved nothing striking in the field of _Halachah_,¹ where alone, according to traditional views, authority can be won among learned _Rabbis_ and their followers. In high _Rabbinical_ quarters he may have been considered a dilettante or an eclectic, perhaps a sort of dreamer; and not without justice. The “practical” people of the period, again, may have pointed out that there was plenty of immediate “practical” work for Manasseh to do in congregations, in societies, in charities and in schools among the Portuguese Jews of the “_Jodenbreestraat_” in Amsterdam, and that he would do better if he devoted himself to ordinary local work, instead of chasing chimeras and planning Utopian schemes in close agreement with the Puritan Saints and _Marrano_ travellers. And yet, in spite of all the immediate needs of the hour, this remarkable man, inspired by a vision of the lost Ten Tribes of _Israel_, wrote one book after another; not the traditional commonplace _Rabbinical_ books dealing with questions and details of the conduct of everyday Jewish religious life, but books about the past and the future, about the Ten Tribes and about _Israel_ as a nation――and with an inimitable touch of mysticism and poetry. He thought that Judaism required something more than local activities, that it needed clear-sighted and fearless self-defence, emancipated from routine, and not localized within the boundaries of one country. And he not only wrote books in _Hebrew_, Spanish, and Latin on this subject, but had several of them translated into other languages; he also entered into personal relations with non-Jewish “dreamers” who had proved by their ideas their intellectual kinship with him, although they challenged him to controversy on some essential points. He wrote petitions and proposals, and interfered to a certain extent with what should, according to some other rabbis, be confidingly left to Providence. It had dawned upon him that the Jews should resettle in England, to pave the way for their final resettlement in Palestine. ¹ Jewish Jurisprudence.