Creator Bio
Simone Luzzatto
1583–1663
Born in Venice to a prominent rabbinic family with German roots, Simone (Simḥah ben Isaac) Luzzatto served as rabbi for the city’s Ashkenazic synagogue, Scuola Grande Tedesca, for more than fifty years. Thoroughly conversant with classical and Renaissance literature, he wrote in both Italian and Hebrew. Among his works is a (lost) justification of Jewish oral law, known only through a reference to it by Samuel Aboab (ca. 1610–1694). In his Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei (Discourse on the State of the Jews), Luzzatto offered pragmatic economic arguments for the continued tolerance of Venice’s Jewish community. Menasseh Ben Israel and John Toland, among others, drew on this work in their own discourses promoting Jewish civil rights.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita Citta di Venetia (Discourse on the Condition of the Jews, and in Particular Those Living in the Illustrious City of Venice): On the Jewish Population
As for the number of the Jews, one cannot precisely determine it, not even having firm knowledge of the places in which they dwell. Regarding the ten tribes that were captured by…
Primary Source
Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita Città di Venetia (Discourse Concerning the Condition of the Jews, and in Particular Those Living in the Illustrious City of Venice): On Jewish Commerce
The Hebrews have been taught and instructed more than any other nation in the school of hardship under the rigorous discipline of that necessity, because they are deprived of real estate, forbidden…
Primary Source
Socrate, overo, Dell’humano sapere esercitio seriogiocoso (Socrates, or On Human Knowledge)
Socrates’ defence was very carefully heard in the presence of the Academicians in the public assembly over a few days, and it produced no little disquiet in the minds of the judges, whose minds turned…