CHAVES

CHAVES, Portuguese family, named after its town of origin, Chaves. After the expulsion and forcible conversions of 1496–97, it was one of the wealthiest and most distinguished of the Marrano families. Branches of the family settled in Amsterdam, Leghorn, and London in the 17th and 18th centuries. Notable among those in Amsterdam were MOZES DE CHAVES, a calligrapher who lived in the beginning of the 18th century; AARON DE CHAVES, who in 1767 published Reuel Jesurun's Dialogo dos Montes, prefacing it by a poem of his own, written in Portuguese; and JACOB DE CHAVES, disciple of Moses Ḥayyim luzzatto , to whom the latter dedicated his play La-Yesharim Tehillah, as a present on his marriage to Rachel de Vega Enriques in 1743. Members of the Chaves family in London included the cantor ISAAC DE CHAVES, who lived in the beginning of the 18th century, and his contemporary, DAVID DE CHAVES, a physician to the Beth Ḥolim society. An ex-captain in the Portuguese service, Captain Chaves, then living in Leghorn, was denounced to the Lisbon Inquisition in 1658. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.L. D'Azevedo, Hoistoria dos christãos Novos Portugueses (1921), index; J.S. da Silva Rosa, Geschiedenis der Portugeesche Joden te Amsterdam (1925), index; A.M. Hyamson, Sephardim of England (1951), index; I. Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao (1957), index.