Jacob Rodrigues Pereira

Transcription

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of This Week in Jewish History. Today we're going to celebrate the birthday of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira. This very important individual was one of the first people to teach deaf mutes how to communicate. A crypto Jew from Portugal, he made a signal achievement and huge contribution to the lifestyle quality of disabled people everywhere (Please ignore what I'm saying here, it's an editing error. Sheesh). Jacob Rodrigues Pereira was born in Portugal in 1715. His family work were crypto Jews, that is they were secretly Jewish and practicing as Christians and in fact he was baptized as a child, out of fear of the Portuguese Inquisition the family practiced their judaism in secret. Sometimes these people are known as marranos which is a derogatory term. "Crypto-Jews" is preferred term. When his father died when Pereira was six years old his mother took the family to Bordeaux in France where are they openly resumed living as Jews. It was at this age that he received his brit mila (circumsicion) and he became a very dedicated supporter of the jewish people, something that was very useful for him later on when he achieved his fame. Primarily he achieved his fame through his invention a method of teaching deaf mutes to communicate. He had a sister who was deaf mute, and through using various hand signs he adapted a manual language for the Deaf which was in many ways a huge innovation over earlier methods that were developed over the past couple centuries and he eventually got her to speak that is to communicate. At this point his methods were recognized by a wealthy French family who hired him to teach their son how to our communicate and he developed this method to such a degree that he eventually was named to the Royal Society of London in 1759 after having been recognized by the King Louis the 15th for his contributions to deaf people and deaf mutes in France. he went on to in develop this method significantly but in fact that was only one of his many talents he was known for his pioneering work in computing skills and he in fact invented a machine that was and early eighteenth-century precursor of modern computing devices. He was very active in the financial world as well in fact even advising the French government on how to you reduce their deficit He later went on to champion various Jewish causes and ultimately won their acceptance in bordeaux with the official right to reside in that reigon. Years later he was recognized primarily however for his work with deaf mutes. This is a coin that was minted in Portugal in 1981 which was the International Year of the Disabled Person honoring his achievements for deaf mutes everywhere. Well that's it for this week; I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you have a fantastic week