Israel and Humanity
Elijah Benamozegh
1863
The Jewish Idea of Progress
Judaism’s approach to history is shaped by the fact that unlike other religions, it locates perfection not at the beginning but at the end of history. This, surely, is the meaning of its commitment to the coming of a messianic era, which we may define as faith in a future perfection of the human race—religious, moral…
Engage with this Source
Creator Bio
Elijah Benamozegh
1823–1900
Traditionalist rabbi and liberal scholar Elijah Benamozegh expressed an unlikely combination of traditional beliefs and modernizing practices in his theological and philosophical works. A lifelong inhabitant of Livorno, Italy, he received a Jewish education from his uncle, a Moroccan kabbalist. Benamozegh was a member of the rabbinic court and a professor at Livorno’s modern rabbinical seminary. He published works in Hebrew, Italian, and French that were notable for their highly idiosyncratic theology. In addition to expounding a balance among religious traditions, modern scholarship, and science, Benamozegh’s works displayed a highly unusual openness to harmonizing Judaism with pagan and even Christian religious traditions. With equal idiosyncrasy, they reimagined Judaism’s kabbalistic tradition as a theory of God’s manifestation in all realms of human culture and the natural world—and as a vehicle of religious universalism. Benamozegh combined this commitment to finding universalism within Judaism’s kabbalistic tradition with an intense Italian patriotism, itself kabbalistically inflected.
Related Guide
Rabbinic Scholarship, 1750–1880
Despite the challenges of the early modern period, rabbinic scholarship flourished in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.
Related Guide
Religious Movements in the West and in the Ottoman Empire, 1750–1880
Jewish rituals, synagogue spaces, and the prayer service itself came under increasing scrutiny in light of the call for modernization.
You may also like
Lessons of Jewish Moral Theology
These lessons (of which the first forty-seven paragraphs were already published in the Rivista israelitica) were written in 1832 for the use of those youth who, upon completing their primary and…
Lev ha-Ivri (The Heart of a Jew)
What would our ancestors have done if they had seen a Jewish community appointing a prayer-reader and a rabbi for themselves dressed in the vestments of a Christian priest, and setting up an idol in…
On the Emancipation of Women in Jewish Worship
Theology teaches us that when God the Eternal formed man He gave him an extra rib. This rib was destined for the formation of woman in order that this creature, who was to become the rich…
Hymns Written for the Use of Hebrew Congregations. Charleston, Congregation Beth Elohim
While man explores, with curious eye,
The works of nature and of art,
He passeth real wisdom by,
Nor cares to read the human heart.
A stranger to…
Is the Printing Press Harmful? A Rabbi from Sarajevo Responds
How great is the benefit of the printing houses, for thanks to the power of the printing press, the Torah is enhanced everywhere in the world. The rabbis are certainly making the effort to produce…
Shem ha-gedolim ha-shalem (Names of the Great Ones, Complete)
Although he himself would not recite “for the sake of the unification,” in keeping with the ruling of the Gaon—the Noda bi-Yehudah [R. Ezekiel Landau]—he was occasionally jealous of those who say it.…