A ‘Haro’ing tale of a Jewish medical student: Notes on David de Haro (1611-1636)—the first Jewish medical graduate of the University of Leiden

Abstract

The University of Padua Medical School is known to be the first institution to officially allow Jews to matriculate, beginning in the early fifteenth century. It remained the only university to do so until around the mid-seventeenth century, when medical schools in the Netherlands first began accepting Jewish students as well. In this essay we focus on one student from this Dutch historical chapter, David de Haro, rescuing him from obscurity and identifying him as likely the first Jewish medical graduate of the famed University of Leiden. Marshalling a wide array of previously untapped archival material, we reconstruct part of his tragically short life. In addition to gaining insight into the experience of university life in this period, we catch a rare glimpse of the unique challenges faced by a young Jewish medical student in the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century.