Daniel M. Swetschinski was born in Brussels in 1944 and grew up in Amsterdam. He studied Semitic languages, philosophy, and history at the universities of Ghent, Amsterdam and Brandeis, and has taught Jewish history at McGill University and the University of Arizona. His many published articles on Dutch Jewish history include a contribution on the period 1516-1621 in Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland edited by J.C.H. Blom et al (the English-language edition of which is also published by the Littman Library as The History of the Jews in the Netherlands). He co-edited Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians (1982) in honour of Alexander Altmann, and has been a major collaborator on projects of the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam: The Lopes Suasso Family, Bankers to William III (1988) and Orphans Objects: Facets of the Textiles Collection of the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam (1997).