Obadiah the Proselyte

He was born Johannes, son of Dreux, around 1070 in Oppido Lucano, a small town in South Italy, today in the province of Potenza, Basilicata.

[12] The key piece of evidence for reconstructing his own varied output came from a single colophon leaf, all that remains of a prayer-book, now preserved in the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati (MS H.U.C.

An inscription on the colophon says, in Hebrew, that "Obadiah the Norman proselyte" who converted to Judaism "in the month of Elul" of 1102 has written the prayer-book "with his own hand".

[15][16][17][18] From a letter of recommendation written for Obadiah by Baruch ben Isaac, the head of a large yeshivah in the city of Aleppo, Syria,[19] Wertheimer published only the more poetic parts, mostly the lament for the plight of the Palestinian Jews in verse from the introduction; from what remained, hardly anything but the names could be deduced: "This letter was written in his own hand by our mas[ter Baru]kh ... son of ... [Isaac] ... that it might be kept by Obadiah the Proselyte [for use] in all communities of Israel to which he might go.

"[17] It took another 30 years for the letter first to make its way into the Bodleian Library (where it remains to this day)[20] and then to attract the attention of Hebrew Union College professor Jacob Mann, who published it in its entirety in 1930.