Isaac Cohen Belinfante
Isaac Cohen Belinfante was poet, bibliophile, and darshan in Amsterdam. He traced his ancestry to Joseph Cohen Belinfante, a fugitive from Portugal to Turkey in 1526.
Work
Belinfante's printed works include Minḥat Nedavah, a poem in honour of the poet David Franco Mendes; Gilah ve-Ranen, an epithalamium; Ḥinah, elegies on the destruction of the Temple, inserted in the prayer-book Mishmerot ha-Layelah; two sermons in Portuguese, Sermão do Nada Moral and Sermão Moral Sobre o Temor Heroyco ; and a number of Hebrew odes, which are printed in other works written and published at Amsterdam.Among his works which remained in manuscript are Shefer Tehillim, poems on the preachers of Amsterdam; Ateret Paz, a collection of 87 satirical poems; Berit Kehunat Yitzḥak, poems in honour of his friends; Avne Segullah, a collection of poems dedicated to some fellow writers; Siaḥ Yitzḥak, a catalogue of printed books and manuscripts, with extracts and biographical notes on the authors, especially the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish writers of London and Amsterdam. A specimen of his work was published by in Ha-Maggid.
From one of his poems, Kinyan Torah, it appears that Belinfante wrote many works on Talmud, grammar, ethics, Kabbalah, and philosophy. He revised the siddur of the Sephardic rite printed at Amsterdam, 1726, by S. Rodrigues Mendes, and other works printed in that city.