David Cohen de Lara

David Cohen de Lara or David Kohen de Lara (born around 1602 in Hamburg , Amsterdam or Lisbon ; died on October 1, 1674 in Hamburg) was a Sephardic rabbi in Hamburg, philologist and scholar.

Life

Cohen de Lara received his rabbinical training in Amsterdam. Since 1637 he lived in Hamburg, where he was in 1639 the rabbi of the community of Neve Shalom , one of three small communities of Hamburg Sephardim. When these merged into a single community in 1652, Cohen de Lara became their rabbi. In 1656 he was replaced by Isaac Jessurun and then went back to Amsterdam. After Jessurun's death in 1665 he stayed in Hamburg again in the hope of regaining his previous office, but was not reappointed.

Cohen de Lara was a vehement opponent of the movement of the self-proclaimed Messiah Schabbtai Zvi , which had many followers in the Sephardic community in Hamburg. At the height of this movement, Cohen de Lara returned to Amsterdam in 1666 and only returned to Hamburg shortly before his death. There he was buried in the cemetery in Altona .

Cohen de Lara was in scientific exchange with Christian Hebraists . He was valued as a conversation partner, including the Jewish missionary Esdras Edzardus and the anti-Jewish pastor Johannes Müller .

Works

Cohen de Lara wrote several translations from Hebrew into Spanish, including works by Maimonides . His main work, on which he worked for 40 years, is Keter Kehunna , a dictionary of foreign language expressions in the Talmud . It remained unfinished and only extends as far as the letter iodine . It appeared in subscription in 1668 . There are also many Christian scholars among the subscribers.

• Keter Kehunnah , [Hamburg]: Georg Rebenlin, 1668. Dictionary of foreign words in the Talmud.
• Tratado de los artículos de la ley divina , Amsterdam: G. Joosten, 5412 [1651/1652], translation by Maimonides
• Tratado de penitencia , Leiden, Joh. Jach. Baron, 5420 (1660), translation by Maimonides
• Ir David sive De convenientia vocabulorum rabbinicorum cum Graecis, et quibusdam aliis linguis Europaeis , Amstelodami, Ravestein, 1648
• Tratado Del Temor Divino , Amsterdam, Menasse ben Israel, 5393 [1632/1633] (partial translation of Reshit ḥokhmah by Elijah ben Moses de Vidas)

literature

• Michael Studemund-Halèly: David Cohen de Lara. In: Franklin Kopitzsch , Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.) Hamburgische Biographie. Volume 2, Christians, Hamburg 2003, pp. 92-93.