Creator Bio
Isaac Samuel Modeano
ca. 1650–1703
Isaac Samuel Modeano, who studied in Salonika with Elijah Covo, succeeded his father as a member of the burial society (ḥevra kadisha). Beginning in the 1680s, he served as rabbi in a synagogue, then as a judge in one of the city’s four rabbinic courts. From 1697, he was chief rabbi of Salonika. Modeano faced such challenges as outbreaks of plague and a mass conversion of followers of Shabbetai Tzvi to Islam. He wrote messianic liturgical poems published as Renanat mizmor (Hymn of Joy, 1687); he might also have had held Sabbatean beliefs.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Hear my cry, O Lord
Hear my cry, O Lord,Treat Zion well, with favor, speedily.Have mercy, fight my battle for me,For they have turned Jerusalem into ruins.Long have I inhabited a foreign land,Afflicted with bloody…
Primary Source
A nighttime song of praise
A nighttime song of praise I have
To sing before my Lord,
And in the day His help is at my side.
All my life, my soul has longed
To see the courts
Of God, to read the Torah.
And so I come betimes…