Leone da Modena
Leone da Modena ( Jehuda Arje di Modena , also Leo Mutinensis , Judah Aryeh ; born on April 23, 1571 in Venice ; died on March 21, 1648 there ) was a Jewish and professional scientist educated author, poet, teacher and (by Jews and Christians equally) sought-after preacher, Venetian rabbi , translator, author of an autobiography and numerous writings of various contents and is considered to be one of the most complex and opaque personalities of the Jewish-Italian culture of his time.
Life
Leone came from a wealthy family of French origin, who first settled in Viterbo and then in Modena - hence the name. The family left their later residence Ferrara due to the earthquake in 1570 and went to Venice, where Leone Modena was born. Already in his earliest childhood he developed unusual intellectual abilities (first Haftara reading in the synagogue before he was three years old ). He enjoyed a good upbringing and extensive training in Jewish and general subjects including music and singing lessons from changing private tutors. Among other things, he was (1581–1582 in Padua ) a student of Shmuel Archevolti . Da Modena became a famous preacher who, with his numerous writings and knowledge, also attracted the attention of Christians. However, due to the precarious financial situation of his family, he was forced to stay afloat with all sorts of, sometimes unworthy, occupations. In his autobiography he lists 26 different activities that he has exercised during his life, including prayer leader, teacher, interpreter, scribe, proofreader, bookseller, merchant, matchmaker, musician and amulet maker.
He worked in Venice. In his writings (written in Hebrew or Italian ), the dichotomy between new scientific knowledge and faithfulness to tradition, which was characteristic of the intellectual Judaism of Italy at the time, is often expressed. In magen we tzinnah (“shield and spit”) he defended the oral tradition and criticized Uriel da Costa , while in qol sakal (“fool's voice”) he allowed traditional criticism to have its say.
Of his anti-Christian pamphlet magen wa chereb , only five of the nine planned parts were finished. In it he dealt with astute arguments and many exegetical remarks on the subjects of original sin , the Trinity , the incarnation , the virgin birth and Mary, as well as the question of whether the Messiah had already appeared.
His Italian description of Jewish customs ( Historia de 'riti Ebraici , Paris 1635 [? Cf. u.]), Which was written at the request of the English ambassador, was also widely used among non-Jews and - although also used in an anti-Jewish sense - proved to be an effective contribution to Apologetics.
In ari nohem ("Roaring Lion") he attacked the Kabbalah and refuted the alleged old age of the Book of Zohar .
Leone led a troubled life: he took up profession after profession and became an obsessed gamer, which often left him and his family in financial distress. Inconsistent as he was, he wrote in a play entitled sur me ra , “Stay away from evil”, a dialogue both against and for gambling.
By a rabbinical decree ( haskamah ) in 1605 he declared polyphonic choral music in the synagogue permissible, which the composer Salamone Rossi , a close friend of da Modena, put into practice with numerous compositions ( ha-schirim 'ascher li-schlomo , “ The songs of Solomon ”, Venice 1622 f.).
With his wife Rachel Lewi, whom he married on July 6, 1590, Leone Modena had four sons and three daughters. His favorite son Mordechai died in November 1617 during alchemical experiments, as a result of which his father had mortally poisoned him. Another son was killed in a scuffle, another son went to Greece and was missing. Leon's wife is said to have died because of it, gone mad. The death of Mordechai particularly hit Leone Modena hard, he subjected his previous life to strict self-examination, the fruit of which is the extremely contradicting autobiography chajje Jehuda , an openly honest reckoning in which he confesses himself as a failed existence and with which he is unique in his time there it is. It contains relentless reports about his love for the dead bride, his unhappy marriage with her sister, his failure in various professions, his losses in the game, his helpless fight against his passion for gambling, but also about his brilliant successes. At the end he put his will with a detailed regulation of his funeral.
Works / editions (selection)
- eldad u medad , written in 1583, Dialogue on the Admissibility or Harmfulness of Card Games , printed in 1595
- qinah schemo ("Lamentation"), 1584 (Hebrew elegy on the death of his tutor Mose Basola = Moshe b. Benjamin della Rocca Basola)
- stomach we tzinnah ("shield and spit") (against da Costa's criticism of tradition)
- qol sakal ("voice of the gate")
- scha'agat arjeh ("The Lion's Roar"), another apology of the rabbinical tradition and a comparatively weak attempt to refute qol sakal
- sod jescharim ("secret of the righteous"), Venice 1595 (collection of "scientific" peculiarities and riddles)
- sur me ra , Venice 1595 f. ("Avoid evil"; see below note section)
- zemach zaddiq (“ Scion of the Righteous”), Venice 1600, Christianizing Jewish ethics treatise
- midbar jehudah , Venice 1602, selection of his sermons and public lectures
- magen wa chereb (“shield and sword”), polemic against Christianity, fragment, published inter alia Jerusalem 1960, English Lewiston 2001
- Passover Haggadah , Hebrew and Italian (in Hebrew letters), along with an excerpt from Isaac Abrabanel's commentary, including woodcuts, Venice 1609, 1663, 1693
- Galut Jehudah ("The Exile of Jehudas"), Hebrew-Italian dictionary, Venice 1612
- lev ha-arjeh ("Heart of the Lion"), Venice 1612 (treatise on mnemonics)
- ben dawid (treatise on metempsychosis , i.e. pamphlet against the possibility of such), first printed in ta'am sekenim , 1855
- chaje Jehuda ("Life of Jehuda"), ca.1618 (autobiography)
- bet lechem jehudah , Venice 1624 f. (Index / real dictionary for the collection of Talmudic Aggadot En Ja'acov ); then again Prague 1705
- bet jehudah (“The house of Jehuda”), Venice 1628 (additions to bet lechem jehudah ); further: Krakow 1643, Verona 1643, Prossnitz 1649, Prague 1668
- ziqne jehudah ("The ancestors of Yehuda"), collection of his responses (first Jerusalem 1956)
- Historia dei Riti ebraici ed observanza degli Hebrei di questi tempi , Paris 1635
- ari nohem ("Roaring Lion"), completed in 1638, first printed in Leipzig in 1840; ed. by Nechama Leibowitz Jerusalem 1971
- Pi Arjeh ("mouth of the lion"), additions to the Hebrew-Italian. Dictionary / little rabbinical-Italian vocabulary (Padua 1640, Venice 1648)
- Yom se jehi mishkal kol chatosai (prayer to Yom kippur katon)
- ma'adanne melech (chess book, erroneously attributed to Jedaja Bedarschi)
- Isaak Samuel Reggio (ed.): Bechinat ha-qabbalah ("Examination of Tradition"), Gorizia 1852
- Leo Modena's letters and papers , ed. v. Ludwig Blau , Budapest 1905–1906 (annual reports of the State Rabbinical School 28 and 29)
- Chajje Jehuda , autobiography L. d. Modenas, ed. v. A. Kahana, Kiev 1912; engl. MR Cohen, Princeton 1988
- Jewish rites, manners and customs . Ed., Trans. and commented by Rafael Arnold . Wiesbaden: Marixverlag, 2007
Left manuscripts
His most important works that have only been handwritten include his commentaries on Pirke Awoth , on the five megillot , on Mishle , the Psalms , the Book of Samuel , the Passover Haggadah, commentaries on the Haftarot, various apocryphal translations and kowez schirim , a collection of his absent-minded poems.
literature
- Abraham Geiger : Leon da Modena. Wroclaw 1856.
- Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews. Vol. X, Leipzig 1868.
- M. Stern: The rabbi's fight against the Talmud. Wroclaw 1902.
- NS Libowitz: Jehuda Arje Modena's life and works. New York 1902.
- Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Orient Printer, Chernivtsi 1930.
- Simon Dubnow : World History of the Jewish People. 1925 ff., Vol. VI, especially Appendix, Note 4.
- Samuel Meisels : Leon da Modena. In: Georg Herlitz (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Lexikon . Vol. III, Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1927.
- E. Rivkin: Leon da Modena. 1952.
- Shlomo Simonsohn : Leon Modena. London 1952
- Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature. Munich 1977.
- J. Boksenboim (Ed.): Iggerot R. Jehudah Arjeh-mi Modena. Tel Aviv 1984.
- HE Adelman: Success and Failure in the Seventeenth Century Ghetto of Venice. The Life and Thought of Leon Modena, 1571-1648. Michigan / London 1985.
- Leon da Modena. In: Julius Hans Schoeps (Ed.): New Lexicon of Judaism. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1992, ISBN 3-570-09877-X .
- Robert Bonfil, David Malkiel (Eds.): The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World (= Italia, Conference Supplement Series. Vol. 1). Magnes Press, Jerusalem 2003.
- Gianfranco Miletto: Leon (e) Modena. In: Metzler Lexicon of Jewish Philosophers. Stuttgart / Weimar 2003.
- Saverio Campanini : Leone Modena and the doctrine of reincarnation. In: G. Necker, R. Zeller (eds.): "And create the crowd of souls". The discussion about the pre-existence of souls in the 17th century. ( Morgen-Glantz. Journal of the Christian Knorr von Rosenroth Society , 24), 2014, pp. 29–50.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Other forms of name: Leo da Modena , Leon or Leone Modena , Leo Juda Arje di Modena , Jehuda Arje (Leon) ben Isaak / Isaac da Modena etc. Leone Modena felt very connected to Venice, so that he included the Italian editions of his works Leon Modena da Venezia used to sign.
- ^ After Wininger died March 23, 1649
- ↑ From 1612 until his death. According to other information already since 1593, according to yet other information since 1609. His views on religious and legal questions were of great weight. He was asked for appropriate expert opinions from near and far.
- ↑ So, to name just one example, he translated parts of Ludovico Ariostos Orlando Furioso into Hebrew.
- ^ A characterization of Leone da Modena by Samuel Meisels in: Georg Herlitz (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Lexikon. Vol. III, Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1927, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 30-180015078036 , Sp. 1050-1052, here Sp. 1052: L. d. M. was a strange phenomenon: a man of comprehensive knowledge and a critical mind, he was nevertheless confused in thinking, unbalanced in nature and apparently so full of contradictions that on the basis of his writings he now faithful to tradition, now the reformers are among theirs, Graetz even calls him a "burrower". In fact, he was, presumably not entirely uninfluenced by the heretical views of Uriel Acosta, like him a doubter, but without drawing his conclusions. In the eternal conflict with himself, he often sharply criticized the tradition, only to soon be able to prove to himself that it was justified .
- ↑ Translated into Latin, German, Italian and French
- ↑ Which, however, can also be read in Italian with a different separation: chi nasce mor : "He who is born dies", which at the same time shows the virtuoso language skills of the only thirteen-year-old. In the text, every line of Hebrew verse alternates with an Italian line, which rhyme with each other. In addition, each pair of verses is so artfully constructed that the Hebrew and Italian lines sound the same syllable for syllable.
- ↑ In which an invented Amittai b. Jedajah ibn Raz from Alkala = "The true one, son of the mystery [that only God knows]" claims the pure opposite of what was carried out in the stomach . The duplication of the commandments is merely a means by which the scholars wanted to rule over the Jewish people, etc.
- ↑ Other editions: Verona 1647, Amsterdam 1649, Frankfurt am Main 1702
- ↑ Translated from Italian into Hebrew, with instructive fables and woodcuts
- ↑ According to other sources Paris 1637. Complete edition Venice 1638. The work was translated into French by Richard Simon in 1684 (or earlier?) And a few years later into Latin, English and Dutch; a Hebrew translation by Solomon Rubin appeared in Vienna in 1867 under the strange title Shulchan Aruch .
- ↑ First print by qol sakal , together with scha'agat arjeh and a short biography of da Modenas
- ^ MR Cohen (Ed.): The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi. LMs "Life of Judah"
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Leone da Modena |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Yehuda Arje di Modena; Leo mutinensis; Judah Aryeh |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Venetian rabbi |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 23, 1571 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Venice |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 21, 1648 |
| Place of death | Venice |