ABSTRACT
Margaret Fell's first pamphlets to the Jews were written in the immediate aftermath of the Whitehall Conference about Jewish readmission, which had been called by Oliver Cromwell in December 1655. This chapter examines the attitudes Fell demonstrates towards Jews in her first batch of pamphlets in 1656 and 1657 and compares them to her later pamphlets. It suggests that developments within the Quaker movement itself, the different religious and political climate of the latter period, as well as Jews' messianic claims concerning Sabbatai Sevi, were responsible for the changes between her mid-1650s work and the pamphlets published in the 1660s. Since Fell no longer expected the Jews to convert because they had not responded to her earlier universalist, salvational message, her attitudes to them became considerably more brutal. Renaissance Jews remained attached, like Paul's Galatian converts, to fleshly particularity.
