Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

Joseph del Medico Cretensis, Philosophus et Medicus. Portrait from Sefer Elim 1629.

Joseph Salomo Delmedigo (also J osef Sch elomo ha R ofe, acronym JaSchaR ; born June 16, 1591 in Kandia ; died October 16, 1655 in Prague ) was a Jewish doctor, rabbi, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.

Life

Delmedigo was born in Kandia in Crete in 1591 as the son of Rabbi Eljiah Delmedigo . The Delmedigo family was an Ashkenazi family of scholars who had emigrated to Crete from Germany . According to family tradition, Delmedigo received a thorough Jewish education in Crete and a classical one in Italy. He studied astronomy and mathematics at the University of Padua, including with Galileo . At the same time he was in contact with the Venetian rabbi Leone da Modena , who obviously had a strong influence on him. In 1613 he completed his studies in Padua and returned to Crete. He practiced as a doctor and began collecting for his encyclopedic work Ya'ar ha-Lebanon . After a short time (1616) he left his newly married wife and Crete forever.

His wanderings initially took him to Cairo , where he dealt with mathematics and dealt with Karaitic ideas. From Cairo he moved to Constantinople . Here, too, he met with exponents of Kara and got to know some advocates of Kabbalah . He moved on to Poland-Lithuania and was in Vilnius for some time personal physician to Prince Christoph Radziwiłł . After five years in Poland-Lithuania, Delmedigo moved on to Western Europe.

Via Hamburg and Glückstadt he reached Amsterdam in 1628 , where Menasse ben Israel printed his first book Sefer Elim in 1629 , which also had an influence on the young Spinoza . In Amsterdam he worked as a preacher and teacher in the Beth Israel congregation . In 1630 he moved to Frankfurt am Main , at that time the largest Jewish community in Germany. It was to be his longest and most peaceful stay since he left Crete. He was appointed the official city ​​doctor of the Jewish community and held this position until he moved to Prague in 1645. Little is known about the last ten years of his life. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo died in the autumn of 1655 and was buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery .

Works (selection)

• Ya'ar Levanon (The Forest of Lebanon), unfinished.
• Sefer Elim , Amsterdam 1629.
• Sefer Ma'ayan Gannim , Amsterdam 1629 (Odessa 1864).
• Sefer Ta'alumot Hokhmah , Basel-Hanau 1629–1631.

literature

• Isaac Barzilay: Yoseph Shlomo Delmedigo (Yashar of Candia). His Life, Work and Times . Leiden 1974.
• Stefan Schreiner: Josef Shelomo Delmedigo's stay in Poland-Lithuania. In: Giuseppe Veltri, Annette Winkelmann (ed.): On the threshold to modernity. Jews in the Renaissance . Leiden 2003, ISBN 90-04-12979-0 , pp. 207-232.
• George Age: Two Renaissance astronomers (Dva renesanční astronomové), David Gans, Joseph Delmedigo . Prague 1954.
• Abraham Geiger : Meló chofnájim: Biography of Josef Solomon del Medigo's, whose letter to Serach ben Nathan . Berlin 1840.
• Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews . Volume 10, pp. 142-155.
• Jacob Haberman:  DELMEDIGO, JOSEPH SOLOMON . In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 5, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865933-6 , pp. 543-544 (English).

Web links

• Richard Gottheil , Isaac Broydé:  DELMEDIGO, JOSEPH SOLOMON. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rofe = Heb. Doctor.
2. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 160.
3. ^ Haberman, 2007.
4. ↑ Stefan Schreiner: Delmedigo's picture of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews - experiences from five years. In: Studia Judaica . 2/4 (1999) pp. 165-183. pdf
5. ↑ Theun de Vries: Baruch de Spinoza in self-testimonies and image documents (= Rowohlt's monographs. Vol. 171). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1970, p. 28 f.
6. ↑ Barzilay 1974, p. 79.