Mordechai Arbell, a former ambassador in the Israel Diplomatic Corps, graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Paris, and served as a research fellow at the Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem. He is the chairman of Sefarad, an organization for the preservation of the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish heritage, and of the Institute of Research of the World Jewish Congress. Arbell has published books and research papers on Sephardic history in the Americas, Austria, Albania, Croatia, Philippines and India, among them The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean and The Portuguese Jews of Jamaica.