Adaptation and Acceptance: Moses Ḥayim Luzzatto's Sojourn in Amsterdam among Portuguese Jews

1. Archivio studio universita Padova, ms. 233, fols. 168, 180, and 187. The records indicate that Luzzatto matriculated in 1723, 1725, and 1726, but do not show that he sat for exams or earned a degree. I am grateful to Debra Glasberg, who found these documents and generously shared them with me in the midst of her detailed research on Isaac Lampronti and the study of medicine in eighteenth-century Italy.

2. Leshon limudim (Language studies), a philosophy of Hebrew language. The book demonstrated Luzzatto's knowledge at that time of at least Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, French, and Italian.

3. On Thursday, 13 Tishre 5486 (September 20, 1725), Sabbatai Marini and Nathaniel Levi ordained Luzzatto as ḥaver, the first level of ordination in early modern Italy; Archivio della Comunità Ebraica di Padova, no. 13, p. 213. (The same document records the ordination of Moses David Valle and Isaiah Romanin, who shared Luzzatto's redemptive conviction.) On the ordination, see Nissim, Paolo, “Sulla data della laurea rabbinica conseguita da Moshe Chajim Luzzatto,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 20 (1954): 499–503 ; and Tishby, Isaiah, “Rabbi Moses David Valle (Ramdav) and His Position in Luzzatto's Group,” in Messianic Mysticism: Moses Hayim Luzzatto and the Padua School, trans. Hoffman, Morris (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 304–8. Nissim was the first to publish the document; he included a facsimile of the page and an Italian translation of the Hebrew text. The year of Luzzatto's original ordination is often misstated as 1726, based on the careless reading of the year without regard for the month (see Nissim, 502). On the levels of rabbinic ordination, see Bonfil, Robert, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy, trans. Chipman, Jonathan (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1990), 87–95 .

4. See Carlebach, Elisheva, “Redemption and Persecution in the Eyes of Moses Hayim Luzzatto and His Circle,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 54 (1987): 1–29 ; and Garb, Jonathan, “The Circle of Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto in Its Eighteenth-Century Context,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 44, no. 2 (2011): 189–202 .

5. Chriqui, Mordechaï, 'Iggerot Ramḥal u-bene doro (Jerusalem: Mekhon Ramḥal, 2001), nos. 120–30. At least eleven bans are extant. On the controversy, see Carlebach, Elisheva, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 195–255 .

6. Giuseppe Almanzi, Luzzatto's first biographer, recorded only that Luzzatto published three books in the city, and that a handful of letters attest to his continued contact with friends or students in Padua; see Almanzi, Giuseppe, “Toledot R’ Mosheh Ḥayim Luẓato me-Padovah,” Kerem Chemed 3 (1838): 112–69. Graetz, Dubnow, and other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians identified one of Luzzatto's Amsterdam publications, the drama La-yesharim tehillah, as the most notable element of his stay. Simon Ginzburg went a little further by surmising that Luzzatto was a changed man in Amsterdam—contemplative, sad, and defeated; see Ginzburg, Simon, The Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto: Founder of Modern Hebrew Literature (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1931). Jozeph Michman and Irene Zwiep dealt with Luzzatto's influence on the Portuguese poet David Franco Mendes; see Michman, Jozeph, David Franco Mendes, a Hebrew Poet (Jerusalem: Massada, 1951), and Zwiep, Irene E., “An Echo of Lofty Mountains: David Franco Mendes, a European Intellectual,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35 (2001): 285–96. Joëlle Hansel has worked on Luzzatto's systems of logic written during his stay in Amsterdam; see Hansel, Joëlle, “Rational Investigation and Kabbalah in the Work of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto” (in Hebrew), Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 40 (1998): 99–108 . More recently, Yoni Garb has focused on rhetoric and pietism in Luzzatto's Amsterdam compositions; see Garb, Jonathan, Kabbalist in the Heart of the Storm: R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2014), chaps. 5–6.

Until now, the sole work explicitly dedicated to Luzzatto's life in Amsterdam was a short article by Jakob Meyer, caretaker of the Ets Haim Library following the Second World War, who discovered two references to Luzzatto and some references to his acquaintances; see Jakob Meyer, The Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam, 1736–1743 (Amsterdam: Joachimsthal, 1947).

The reason for the gap in scholarship on Luzzatto may stem from academic compartmentalization: scholars of Italian Jewish history, Kabbalah, and modern Hebrew literature are not wont to peruse Portuguese archives, while scholars of western Sephardim have had little to no reason to consider the vagaries of Luzzatto's biography.

7. Archive of the Portuguese-Jewish Community (SAA), 334, no. 969, p. 315. Although this one-time grant to Luzzatto was comparable to entries throughout the record book, it paled in comparison to many other grants provided in the listing in which he was entered. His name appears among a list of charity granted to men from abroad, most of whom were collecting large sums (as high as 250 florins) for their communities in Jamaica, Curaçao, Suriname, London, Italy, and the Levant.

Two lines above Luzzatto's name, a scribe recorded that a Jeudah Mendola of Italy received three florins on the very same day as Luzzatto. If this was Judah Mendola of Mantua, who had once lived in Padua and was a clear supporter of Luzzatto throughout the controversy, it would indicate that Luzzatto had not traveled alone.

8. Luzzatto's financial needs may have stemmed from his father's own hardships, which coincided with an increasing tax burden faced by Padua's wealthy Jews during the mid-eighteenth century. Luzzatto recorded in a letter that, at one point, his father owed a sum of 12,000 ducats, which threatened the integrity of his business; the same letter states that the sum had been repaid (Chriqui, ’Iggerot, no. 87).

9. Chriqui, 'Iggerot, no. 116. I have yet to discover external evidence of Luzzatto's professional occupation in Amsterdam. Scholars have alternatively suggested it involved polishing stones or grinding lenses. See Isaacs, Abraham S., A Modern Hebrew Poet: The Life and Writings of Moses Chaim Luzzatto (New York: Office of the “Jewish Messenger,” 1878), 34; and Ginzburg, Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, 113. Meyer denied that Luzzatto was a lens grinder, thinking that it rang too closely to Spinoza. Instead, he adhered to the Amsterdam tradition that labeled Luzzatto a diamond cutter: “tradition that still lived in the mind of the poet Isaac da Costa whose father Daniel Haim, born in 1761, had still personally known David Franco Mendes” (Meyer, Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam, 9–10). Chriqui, believing implicitly that Luzzatto engaged in constant Torah study, expressed doubts about Luzzatto's occupation in the gem business (Chriqui, ‘Iggerot, no. 132, p. 358 n. 436).

10. SAA, 334, no. 1210, pp. 18, 26, 35. In this register, men, women, and orphans are listed together, and each received a given sum on Rosh Ḥodesh of every month of the year. The record book shows that the group's average yearly income and expenses (rendimento & despesas) totaled about four thousand florins per year. Relatively small sums were donated by wealthy members of the community in memoriam of someone dear to them, while the remainder of the money was collected in the charity boxes placed at the entrance of the Esnoga. The organization originally served Amsterdam's poor Ashkenazim, but from 1670 on it was used to support underprivileged Sephardim on a monthly basis. See Bernfeld, Tirtsah Levie, “Financing Relief in the Jewish Community in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture (1500–2000), ed. Israel, Jonathan and Salverda, Reinier (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 70 n. 21.

11. The most well-known Luzzatto of the nineteenth century, Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), traced the family's roots to Lusatia (German: Lausitz; Polish: Łuzyca), a territory in the modern-day German states of Saxony and Brandenburg. See Luzzatto, Samuel David, Autobiographie S. D. Luzzato's … (Padua: J. Luzzatto, 1882), 3 ; Morpurgo, Edgardo, Notizie sulle famiglie ebree esistite a Padova nel XVI secolo (Udine: Del Bianco, 1909), 7 ; Colorni, Vittore, “Cognomi ebraici italiani a basse toponomastica straniera,” in Judaica minora. Saggi sulla storia dell'ebraismo italiano dall'antichità all'età moderna (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1991), 71 .

12. On the concept of Nação, see Swetschinski, Daniel, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 188 . On more about communal tensions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Amsterdam see Bodian, Miriam, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 125–31; and Ferziger, Adam S., “Between ‘Ashkenazi’ and Sepharad: An Early Modern German Rabbinic Response to Religious Pluralism in the Spanish-Portuguese Community,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35 (2001): 17–18 (see Carlebach, Pursuit of Heresy, 137–43).

13. See Bernfeld, Tirtsah Levie, Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 18–19 ; and Fuks-Mansfeld, R. G., “Enlightenment and Emancipation, c. 1750 to 1814,” in The History of the Jews in the Netherlands, ed. Blom, J. C. H., Fuks-Mansfeld, R. G., and Schöffer, I. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002), 174 , citing Pinto, Isaac de, Reflexoens politicas, tocante a constituiçaõ da Naçaõ Judaica (Amsterdam, 1748), 31 . In his report on the financial situation of the Portuguese community, de Pinto reported that in 1743 there were 419 paying members, 180 nonpaying members who were not on poor relief, and 750 families receiving financial assistance (equal to about 3,000 individuals, assuming a family consisted of four members); see Meyer, Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam, 6, citing d'Ancona, Jacob, “De Portugese Gemente ‘Talmoed Tora’ te Amsterdam tot 1795,” in Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland, ed. Brugmans, Hendrik and Frank, A. (Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1940), 301 .

14. See Michman, David Franco Mendes, 21; and Paraira, M. C. and da Silva Rosa, J. S., eds., Gedenkschrift uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het 300-jarig bestaan der onderwijsinrichtingen Talmud Tora en Ets Haïm bij de Portug. Israel (Amsterdam: Roeloffzen-Hübner, 1916), 33 .

15. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 14.

16. Chriqui, 'Iggerot, no. 109; Carlebach, Pursuit of Heresy, 242.

17. Carlebach, Pursuit of Heresy, 75–159.

18. Lion pursued medical studies at the University of Padua briefly in the early 1730s; see Abdelkader Modena (and Edgardo Morpurgo), Medici e Chirurghi Ebrei Dottorati e Licenziati nell'Università di Padova dal 1617–1816 (Biblioteca di Storia della Medicina 3), ed. Aldo Luzzatto, Ladislao Münster, and Vittore Colorni (Bologna: Forni, 1967), 126. For a reference to a Dr. Luzato, who was paid for house visits, see SAA, 334, no. 530, p. 130. It may have been common for Portuguese communal scribes to record the formal titles of members of the medical profession: in another record book, the Amsterdam physician and printer of Hebrew books, Napthali Hirts Levi Rofe, was recorded only as “Doctor van Embden” (SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 47).

19. A record of Lion's marriage in 1737 in Amsterdam is housed in the archives of the Portuguese Jewish community; for a facsimile of the marriage record, see Meyer, Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam, 8–9. Lion was likely the youngest of the four Luzzatto children (after Moses Ḥayim, Simon, and Laura Hannah).

20. Manuscript EH 47D37 in the Ets Haim Library consists of three letters related to the controversy, all stemming from Venice, corresponding to Chriqui, ’Iggerot, nos. 100, 101, and 104. The running header, in a later hand, states “neged Ramḥal.”

21. SAA, 334, no. 1189, pp. 227, 230, 233, 236, 239. This particular record book is in very poor condition, having sustained intense water damage.

22. During the years that he received a stipend to study, Luzzatto would have acquired the bare minimum on which to live. Scholars have determined that during the early modern period, an adult needed eighty to one hundred florins per year to meet essential needs. Skilled workers in the Dutch Republic earned approximately three hundred florins per year. Living with a family of five, one would spend 51–67 percent of the income on food, with the remainder going to clothes, fuel, soap, and rent (Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare, 68).

23. SAA, 334, no. 530, p. 229; no. 531, pp. 70, 193, 261. The money is listed as 2:10, equal to two florins and ten stuivers (each stuiver is five cents of a florin). For Dutch monetary measurement, see Gelder, H. Enno van, De Nederlandse Munten (Utrecht-Antwerpen: Het Spectrum, 1965). There was also a Medras Pequeno (see Nahon, Gerard, “The Portuguese Jewish Nation of Amsterdam as Reflected in the Memoirs of Abraham Haim Lopes Arias, 1752,” in Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others, ed. Brasz, Chaya and Kaplan, Yosef [Leiden: Brill, 2001], 70).

In the spring month of Iyar each year, the elected secretary of charity (gabay da sedaca) gave the designated librarian of the Ets Haim Yeshiva (Bibliotecario de Eshaim) fifty florins to disperse among the ’av bet din and ten estudantes on the anniversary of the death of Abraham Penso Felix. The 'av bet din, Isaac Ḥayim Abendana de Britto, received twenty-five florins, ten times the amount of each student. During Luzzatto's tenure, Isaac Judah Leon Templo, well known among bibliographers as a printer of Hebrew books, and Joseph Cohen Belinfante served as the librarians. Belinfante replaced Templo after the latter's death in 1740 (SSA, 1053, fol. 62).

24. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 51. In addition, Pereira founded the yeshivot of Bet Jahacob in Jerusalem and Emet Le Jahacob in Hebron (SAA, 334, no. 530, p. 135).

25. SAA, 334, no. 531, p. 15; no. 1053, p. 53.

26. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 69.

27. SAA, 334, no. 334, no. 32: “Banco da parede enfronte dosseres do Mahamad do Ehal para aporta do Meyo.” Luzzatto's name is written in the second column with the notation “N[ota] B[ene].”

28. SAA, 334, no. 334, pp. a–c. The date the resolution passed was 25 Iyar 5490 (May 12, 1730). Elsewhere, the volume records that on 16 Kislev 5496 (December 1, 1735) the Mahamad elected to record all place seats in the Esnoga (fol. 32). On seating in the Esnoga, see Kaplan, Yosef, “Bans in the Sephardi Community of Amsterdam in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Mirsky, Aaron, Grossman, Avraham, and Kaplan, Yosef (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 530–32; and Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 188, 205–7.

29. See Goldish, Matt, “Jews, Christians and Conversos: Rabbi Solomon Aailion's Struggles in the Portuguese Community of London,” Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994): 227–57.

30. This conflicted with the trend in the lower grades, in which children were taught Jewish subjects in addition to languages, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric, calligraphy, and poetry. For a description of the curriculum, see David Franco Mendes, Memorias do Estabelecimento e Progresso dos Judeos Portuguezes e Espanhoes nesta Famosa Citade de Amsterdam: A Portuguese Chronicle of the History of the Sephardim in Amsterdam up to 1772, edited with introduction and annotations by Fuks, L. and Fuks-Mansfeld, R. G., Studia Rosenthaliana 9, no. 2 (1975): 47–48 ; and Bass, Sabbatai, Sifte yeshenim (Amsterdam, 1680), intro.

31. For a synopsis of the periodical's extant responsa, issued sporadically between 1691 and 1807, see Hirsch, Menko Max, Frucht vom Baum des Lebens, Ozer peroth Ez Chajim (Berlin, 1936).

32. Athias served in his position until his death in 1753, while Abendana de Britto continued until his death in 1760. Even under their joint leadership, Abendana de Britto worked most closely with the estudantes of the Medras Grande and oversaw the publication of Peri ‘eẓ ḥayim.

Yosef Kaplan has pointed out that increased production of responsa literature reflected an intensification of the rabbis’ religious sentiment, rather than the spread of religiosity in the community; see Kaplan, , “Eighteenth Century Rulings by the Rabbinical Court of Amsterdam's Community and Their Socio-historical Significance” (in Hebrew), in Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry, vol. 5, ed. Michman, Jozeph (Jerusalem: The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1988), 1–54 (esp. 8–11); and idem, “An Alternative Path to Modernity,” in An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1–28 . See also Goldish, Matt, “Halakhah, Kabbalah, and Heresy: a Controversy in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam,” Jewish Quarterly Review 84 (1993–94): 153–76.

33. SAA, 334, no. 1053. Ritual items included tzitzit, talitot, and tefillin.

34. The 1728 protocols of the Ets Haim Yeshiva state that a student would receive fifteen florins if the ḥakham approved his pesak for publication (SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 17).

35. For instance, Saul Morteira, Judah Vega, Isaac ben Abraham Uziel, Joseph Delmedigo, Samuel Tardiola, and Jacob Sasportas. Merchant families had encouraged study only until young men were ready to participate in business, See Vlessing, Odette, “The Excommunication of Baruch Spinoza: The Birth of a Philosopher,” in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture (1500–2000), ed. Israel, Jonathan and Salverda, Reinier (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 162 .

36. See Kaplan, Yosef, “The Social Functions of the Herem in the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century,” in Dutch Jewish History: Proceedings of the Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, ed. Michman, Jozeph (Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University, 1984), 111–55; and idem, “Deviance and Excommunication in the Eighteenth Century: A Chapter in the Social History of the Sephardi Community of Amsterdam,” in Dutch Jewish History: Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, ed. Michman, Jozeph (Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University, 1993), 103–15.

37. See Bodian, Miriam, “‘Liberty of Conscience’ and the Jews in the Dutch Republic,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 6 (2011): 1–9 ; and Kaplan, Yosef, Religion, Politics and Freedom of Conscience: Excommunication in Early Modern Jewish Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Menasseh ben Israel Instituut, 2010). Also, in a paper given on the bicentenary of Luzzatto's birth, Rabbi Isaac Landman described Luzzatto's transition from Italy as one to the “city of freedom of conscience—Amsterdam” (“Moses Hayim Luzzatto [1707–1747],” Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis 17 [1907]: 192 ). Of the many biographical sketches of Luzzatto, Landman's is notable because he claimed that Luzzatto paid a short visit to London, an assertion for which I have found no evidence (193).

38. Chriqui, 'Iggerot, no. 116. Several extant letters reflect a warm relationship between the Luzzatto family and Bassan, who had served as chief rabbi of Padua between 1715 and 1722; see Chriqui, 'Iggerot, nos. 12, 16, 51, 87, 92, 93, and 146.

39. Finzi died after Luzzatto left for Amsterdam. Luzzatto composed a eulogy, a copy of which was made by David Franco Mendes in his manuscript ‘Emek ha-shirim, housed in the Ets Haim Library (EH 47B26). For the eulogy, see Ginzburg, S. and Klar, B., Sefer ha-shirim (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1945), 123–29.

40. For letters from Rokeaḥ, see Chriqui, ’Iggerot, nos. 128–30. On Rokeaḥ's installation in 1735, see Sluys, David Mozes, Een Opperrabbijnsbenoeming bij de Hoogduitsch-Joodsche Gemeente te Amsterdam in 1735 (Amsterdam, 1936).

41. See Lowe, E. J., Natural Phenomena and Chronology of the Seasons (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870), 47 .

42. Chriqui, 'Iggerot, no. 118.

43. Intensified rabbinic study under the leadership of Athias and Abendana de Britto, most manifest in Peri ‘eẓ ḥayim, focused on ritual law relevant to contemporary Jews. Luzzatto, meanwhile, had confessed to Bassan while still in Italy that he avoided discussing his intimate mystical experiences and aspirations (see Chriqui, ’Iggerot, no. 99, p. 286). Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea told Bassan that Luzzatto did not discuss the magid with him while the young man was in Mantua in 1731 soon after his marriage to Zipporah Finzi (ibid., no. 145, p. 390).

44. Jozeph Michman posited that Luzzatto was asked to head the Oel Jahacob Yeshiva (Michman, David Franco Mendes, 38). This is feasible only if Oel Jahacob and Emet Le Jahacob did indeed function separately from the Medras Grande. However, there is no firm indication that the yeshivot were distinct from the Ets Haim system, particularly as the names of the same men appear in reference to both. Jacob Pereira's bequeathed “yeshivot” may have merely acted as sources of funding, with all men sitting together in the Medras Grande (Yosef Kaplan in private communication).

45. Chriqui, ’Iggerot, nos. 164.

46. Chriqui, ’Iggerot, nos. 82, 88; Carlebach, Pursuit of Heresy, 229.

47. See Spiner, Yosef, ed., Sefer da‘at tevunot (Jerusalem: Ha-mesorah, 2012), 154–63; and Luzzatto, Derekh ha-Shem, II:6:4.

48. Chriqui, 'Iggerot, no. 118.

49. Genesis 1:2.

50. “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes, which I command you this day for your good” (Deuteronomy 10:12–13).

51. In this way, Luzzatto reflected a trend in Italian Jewish pietism going back to Moses Zacut (ca. 1625–97) and his students. Between 1727 and 1736, Benjamin Kohen Vitale, Joseph Ergas, and Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea all published semipolemical treatises on the supremacy of Kabbalah. On Ergas's and Basilea's opposition to Leone Modena in this context, see Dweck, Yaacob, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 197–98.

52. The library includes printed books and manuscripts from the last several centuries in Bible, Talmud, Halakhah, liturgy, Kabbalah, ethics, philology, belles lettres, and all other literary fields relevant to Portuguese Jewry in the early modern and modern periods.

53. They were not published during Luzzatto's lifetime; they appeared in print for the first time in Amsterdam in 1783. Copies appear in manuscript in a miscellany belonging to David Franco Mendes (EH 47C22). Franco Mendes also recorded Luzzatto's Hebrew translation of a Portuguese poem in his ‘Emek ha-shirim (EH 47B26), fols. 50–52, 54, 58; see Fuks, L. and Fuks-Mansfeld, R. G., Hebrew and Judaic Manuscripts in Amsterdam Public Collections, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 148–49. Presumably, the poem indicates that Luzzatto mastered Portuguese.

54. See EH 47C7, fols. 49r–51r.

55. See EH 47C48 and EH 47E8; Fuks and Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew and Judaic Manuscripts in Amsterdam Public Collections, vol. 2, 178f.

56. See Manekin, Charles, “On Humanist Logic Judaized—Then and Now: Two Models for the Appropriation of Gentile Science,” in Studies in the History of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal, ed. Fontaine, Resianne, Glasner, Ruth, Leicht, Reimund, and Veltri, Giuseppe (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 431–51 (432–34); and idem, “On Moses Hayyim Luzzatto's Logic, and on Ramist Influence in His Writings” (in Hebrew), Daat: A Journal of Jewish Thought 40 (1998): 5–27 .

57. ושממשה ועד משה לא קם חכם כמשה המאיר.

58. There is no evidence that Meldola was a secret follower of Luzzatto in a way that harkened back to the latter's time in Padua. Meldola did publish a prayer book with the kabbalistic annotations of Moses Zacut, entitled Tefillat yesharim (Amsterdam, 1740), but his emphasis was on rabbinics. See his responsa, which exhibit a high level of sophistication, which he published as Divre David (Amsterdam, 1753).

59. For instance, it appeared on the tombstone of the Ashkenazic halakhist and theologian Moses Isserles (1520–72); see Preschel, T., “Mi-Mosheh ve-‘ad Mosheh lo’ kam ke-Mosheh (gilgulah shel ’imrah),” Hadoar 48 (1969): 627–28.

60. Research into the Ets Haim curriculum is necessary to determine if Luzzatto's teachings practically influenced instructors or students in his adopted community. For one scholar's claim of Luzzatto's spiritual impact on the community, see Leibman, Laura Arnold, Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (Middlesex: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012).

61. Derekh ḥokhmah (Amsterdam, 1783), fol. 5v, and EH 47A26, p. 40; see also Zwiep, “An Echo of Lofty Mountains,” 293.

62. Bassan later served as rabbi of the Portuguese community in Hamburg, though I do not presently know when his tenure began.

63. Meldola frequently stated that he sat in the tent of learning (היושב באוהל) of midrash ha-gadol (Medras Grande) of Ets Haim in Amsterdam; see his introductions to Tefillat yesharim and Derekh tevunot, and his approbation to Samson Morpurgo's Shemesh ẓedakah. His father, Raphael Meldola, similarly recorded his own presence in the midrash ha-gadol of Ets Haim in Livorno.

64. Peri ‘eẓ ḥayim 1, fol. 283r (Hirsch, no. 103); Peri ‘eẓ ḥayim 12, fol. 174r (Hirsch, no. 915); Divre David (Amsterdam, 1753), no. 42.

65. Divre David, no. 42.

66. Meldola may have concluded that he could not rely on the tradition of another community. In the nineteenth century, Judah Azsod (1796–1866) (אסאד) ruled in his Yehudah ya‘aleh (Lemberg, 1873), no. 92, that a community required tradition (mesorah) to establish the kashrut of a bird, despite the fact that this was not a talmudic requirement (Rema on Yoreh de‘ah 82:3); see <http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-jewish-communities-ought-to-view.html>, accessed May 17, 2016. In a related halakhic discussion, of a medieval communal debate with respect to eating sturgeon, see Pinchas Roth, “Fish, Customs and Philosophy: A Halakhic Debate in Fourteenth-Century Provence” (in Hebrew), Pe‘amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry (forthcoming).

67. Chriqui, ’Iggerot, no. 88. In a letter to Bassan, Luzzatto contended that Isaac Luria, the early modern kabbalist par excellence, spent no more than two hours per day toiling in halakhic study.

68. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 15. During the summer months, men receiving regular stipends were required to sit in the Medras between 9am–11am and 3pm–5pm; during the winter months, studiers were expected between 9am–11am and for two straight hours in the afternoon just before the recitation of the evening service (‘arvit) in the Esnoga.

69. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 130.

70. SAA, 334, no. 155, p. 40.

71. For a record of his loans to Venetian Jewry, see SAA, 334, no. 179, p. 267. For a facsimile of the protocols of Mikra’ Kodesh, see Meyer, Stay of Mozes Haim Luzzatto at Amsterdam, 21.

72. It was performed by cantors Samuel Rodriguez Mendes and Aaron Cohen de Lara (Luzzatto's colleague in the Medras Grande). See Idelsohn, A. Z., “Songs and Singers of the Synagogue in the Eighteenth Century: With Special Reference to the Birnbaum Collection of the Hebrew Union College Library,” in Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume (1875–1925), ed. Philipson, David (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1925), 397–424 . Mendes was appointed ḥazzan in 1709. Ḥazzan Isaac Cohen de Lara died in 1729, leading the ascension of his son Aaron Cohen de Lara. For a recent recording of the hymn: <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=j08qmUR4j9I>, accessed May 17, 2016.

73. Seder tefilot ha-mo‘adim ke-minhag k”k sefaradim (Amsterdam: Abraham Athias, 1740), fol. 180v. It was later reprinted in Seder mo‘adim ke-minhag k”k ha-sefaradim (Amsterdam: Jacob da Silva Mendes, 1771), where it is preceded by the heading “Leshabeaḥ la-'El,” and appears with a few other hymns, including “Ki ‘eshmerah Shabbat,” in a section of bakashot. In this imprint, Luzzatto's “Le-'El ’elim” took the place of another hymn for the ḥatanim that appeared in a 1725 maḥzor printed by Samuel Rodriguez Mendes. (These pages of bakashot are exactly the same as the earlier edition except that the first page was altered.) Luzzatto's name was not recorded as the author in either prayer book; as such, Israel Davidson lists the hymn anonymously in Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, vol. 3 (New York: Ktav, 1924), 9, no. 177.

“Le-'El ’elim” was also printed in a collection of liturgical poetry entitled Shir ’emunim (Amsterdam, 1793), fols. 17r–17v. This imprint also included a poem modeled on Luzzatto's: “Le-'El ‘olam segule ram” (fols. 9r–9v), known only from a version for a solo voice (manuscript in The Hague, Ms. 23 D24, 16b–c). Cantors of Amsterdam created new pieces by recycling extant melodies; see Seroussi, Edwin, “New Perspectives on the Music of the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogues in North-Western Europe,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 306 .

According to the current shamas of the Esnoga, whose late father was a cantor, “Le-'El ’elim” was in continuous use in the Esnoga until the Second World War.

74. SAA, 5075, no. 8864, no. 349. There is no supporting documentation, so it is impossible to know the extent of Luzzatto's “estate,” whether it referred to anything sizable or was relatively insignificant. Judging by the sums discussed above it was not large.

75. Rachel's father, Isaac da Veiga Henriquez, was one of the highest-taxed members of the community in 1743; see Dias, A. M. Vaz, “Over den vermogenstoestand der Amsterdamsche Joden in de 17e en 18e eeuw,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 51 (1936): 174 . The marriage was registered with the state on November 7, 1742 (see Amsterdam Stadsarchief, Marriage Registry, no. 726, p. 219); I have not found a record of the actual wedding.

76. The books included a half title stating only “La-yesharim tehillah,” and a full title page with dedication and publication information. On deluxe printing, including with red type, see Hill, Brad Sabin, “Hebrew Printing on Blue and Other Coloured Papers,” in Treasures of the Valmadonna Trust Library: A Catalogue of 15^th-Century Books and Five Centuries of Deluxe Hebrew Printing, ed. Sclar, David (London: Valmadonna Trust Library, 2011), 84–111 .

77. SAA, 334, no. 1053, p. 69.

78. Yeshivat Bet ’El and Bet Midrash Keneset Yisra'el, both centers of kabbalistic study, had been recently established in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Ḥayim Abulafia (1660–1744), a kabbalist and rabbi of Izmir, helped rebuild a Jewish community in Tiberias with the financial assistance of Solomon Racach and Hillel Padova, Venetian Jews who had supported Luzzatto in Padua. An account of the proceedings in Tiberias appears in Zimrat ha-’areẓ (Mantua, 1745), which was published with the assistance of Luzzatto's disciple, Jacob Castelfranco.

79. See Yaari, A., “’Efo nikbar Ramḥal,” Moznayim 4 (1932): 9–11 ; Zohar, Haim, “R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto in the Land of Israel” (in Hebrew), Sinai 30 (1952): 281–94; Benayahu, M., “‘Aliyato shel Ramḥal le-'Ereẓ Yisra'el,” in Mazkeret … ha-Rav Yiẓḥak Iẓik ha-Levi Herẓog (Jerusalem: Hekhal Shelomoh, 1962), 467–74. There is a debate over Luzzatto's burial place, based on two documents that seem to be in dispute: a eulogy written by rabbis in Tiberias, claiming Luzzatto was buried in their town next to the grave of Akiva ben Yosef (New York, JTS, MS 4022, fol. 4v), and a printed request for charity from the rabbis of Kefar Yasif (near Acre), which mentions a Ḥayim Lusato (לוסאטו) buried nearby (New York, JTS, B H35a). For the eulogy, see Chriqui, ’Iggerot, no. 167; Ghirondi, , “Mikhtav heh,” Kerem Chemed 2 (1836): 61–62 ; Almanzi, “Toledot R’ Mosheh Hayim Luẓato me-Padovah,” 126; Yaari, A., ’Iggerot ’Ereẓ Yisra'el (Tel Aviv, 1943), 270–72; and Ginzburg, Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, 72. For the charity request, see Rivkind, Isaac, “Yeshuv yehudi be-Kefar Yasif,” Reshimot 4 (1926): 332–44; and Deinard, Ephraim, Shibolim bodedot (Jerusalem: A M. Luntz, 1915), 26–35 .

80. איש חכם היה אשר נתן לו אלקים לב חכם ונבון.

81. Moscow, MS Günzburg, 1206, Russian State Library (IMHM F 48209). Luzzatto stated in the colophon that he concluded his work on 25 Elul 5498. The manuscript is “print-ready” in the sense that there are minimal corrections. Luzzatto's handwriting can be extremely difficult to read, so he seems to have taken care to write this manuscript in a relatively legible hand.

The history of the manuscript is difficult to trace. An owner in the nineteenth century recognized its relation to the printed Mesillat yesharim, as noted on the flyleaf (fol. 1r). It appeared at auction in the late nineteenth century; see Carmoly, G. B., Catalog der reichhaltigen Sammlung hebräischer und jüdischer Bücher und Handschriften (Frankfurt am Main, 1875), 56 (no. 87). The manuscript ended up in the collection of the bibliophile Baron David Günzburg, and languished behind the iron curtain for most of the twentieth century. With the assistance of Yosef Avivi, Abraham Shoshana of the Ofeq Institute published the manuscript for the first time in 1995. For an English translation and annotation, see Shoshana, Abraham, ed., The Complete Mesillat Yesharim: Dialogue and Thematic Versions (Cleveland: Ofeq Institute, 2007).

82. Shoshana, ed., Complete Mesillat Yesharim, 4.

83. Shoshana, ed., Complete Mesillat Yesharim, 15–17.

84. “From here Rabbi Pinḥas ben Yair said: Torah leads to vigilance; vigilance leads to alacrity; alacrity leads to blamelessness; blamelessness leads to separateness; separateness leads to purity; purity leads to piety; piety leads to humility; humility leads to fear of sin; fear of sin leads to sanctity; sanctity leads to the holy spirit; the holy spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead.” The baraita appears in M. Sotah 9:15, B. Avodah Zarah 20b, and Y. Shekalim 3:3 (14b).

85. Derekh ha-Shem, II:3.7–8. There is no extant autograph manuscript of Derekh ha-Shem. A copy was housed in the Ets Haim Library for decades (EH 47C32), and the book was first published in Amsterdam in 1896.

86. In addition to its occasional reprinting, Reshit ḥokhmah's abridgements—Jacob Poggetti's Reshit ḥokhmah kaẓar (Venice, 1600), Jehiel Melli's Tapuḥe zahav (Mantua, 1623), and Jacob Luzzatto's Toẓe'ot ḥayim (Amsterdam, 1650)—attest to its widespread popularity in diluted form.

87. For instance, de Vidas wrote extensively about purity (טהרה), and the cleansing experience of submerging in a ritual bath. He did not present the reader with a step-by-step spiritual ascension.

88. Mishnat ḥakhamim (Wandsbach, 1735), fols. 80r–80v (beginning of Tohorah); and see Flatto, Sharon, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau and His Contemporaries (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 170–71. For the baraita's use in the medieval and early modern period, especially in Reshit ḥokhmah, see Koch, Patrick B., Human Self-Perfection: A Re-Assessment of Kabbalistic Musar-Literature of Sixteenth-Century Safed (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2015), 46–77 .

89. The actual editing of the manuscript was not extensive, for the printed book used the same chapter format and followed much of the manuscript verbatim. Luzzatto's initial pedagogic style was converted relatively easily, because the vast majority of the dialogue consisted of the ḥasid's monologues.

90. The manuscript's colophon states that Luzzatto completed the work on 25 Elul 5498 (September 10, 1738), and the title page of the printed edition records 1740 as the year of publication. Raphael Meldola's haskamah is dated January 19, 1740, so within a little over one year, the finished manuscript had been reshaped.

91. Charles Manekin has argued that Luzzatto was heavily influenced by Ramist theories on rhetoric, logic, and pedagogy—then popular in Holland—which stressed the systemization of knowledge and discouraged the use of voice or dialogue. Manekin's broad point about the influence of Ramism aside, it is unlikely that Luzzatto, having lived in Amsterdam for four years, just happened upon Ramist sources in 1739 and felt compelled to edit the most personal of all his books in a manner that coincidentally removed his biting and overt critique of the rabbinic establishment.

92. On Luzzatto's reception history, see Sclar, David, “The Rise of the ‘Ramhal’: Printing and Traditional Jewish Historiography in the ‘After-Life’ of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,” in Ramhal: Pensiero ebraico e kabbalah tra Padova ed Eretz Israel, ed. Voghera, Gadi Luzzatto and Perani, Mauro (Padua: Esedra editrice s.r.l., 2010), 139–53.

93. Shoshana, ed., Complete Mesillat Yesharim, 525–26.

94. On the importance of print shop employees (editors, correctors, typesetters, etc.), and on the question of “who is an author?” in the early modern period, see Chartier, Roger, The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind: Transformations of the Written Word in Early Modern Europe, trans. Cochrane, Lydia G. (Cambridge: Polity, 2014).

95. Despite sharp cultural and social distinctions, little to no separation between Ashkenazim and Sephardim existed in Amsterdam's print shops, akin to the porous borders in Venice's famous publishing houses that had facilitated Jewish-Christian interaction in the sixteenth century. See David Sclar, “Books in the Ets Haim Yeshiva: Acquisition, Publishing, and a Community of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam” (under review).

96. Emden, Jacob, Zo't torat ha-kena'ot (Amsterdam, 1752), fol. 57b.