Livorno: Seder Nezikin with Commentaries

chapter 18 Livorno: Seder Nezikin with Commentaries

Sixteen years after the publication of Seder Nashim of the Livorno as a location where “something came to flame.” Its Jerusalem Talmud in Amsterdam in 1754 with the two-part synagogue was described as commentary Penei Moshe and Mareh ha-Panim by R. Moses Margoliot (see Chapter 17, “Amsterdam: Seder Nashim one of the notable monuments of the city. Built in with Commentaries”), a second part of that Talmud, Seder 1603 and restored in 1866 … a library of symbolism…. Nezikin, also with Margoliot’s highly regarded commen- Livorno was what the old Jewish chronicles would tary, was published in Livorno. Publication of this volume call a mekom ha-tzedek (a righteous place), for it is especially noteworthy for it is the first volume of a knew neither restrictions nor persecution since the Talmud printed in Italy since the mid-sixteenth century first Marranos founded the community at the end of when, in 1554, the Sabbioneta press of Tobias Foa pub- the sixteenth century.4 lished tractate Kiddushin after the Talmud was burned in 1553, and it became a banned work. The Jewish community grew rapidly from a few hundred The Jewish presence in Livorno in northwest Tuscany, in the late 1500s to 1,175 in 1642 and about five thousand Italy, dates from the sixteenth century. Jewish bank- in 1689. The community was sufficiently prosperous and ers were already present throughout the duchy when commercially successful that, on the urging of Colbert, Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany, declared Livorno a free port chief minister of Louis XIV, that monarch offered the on March 26, 1548, thereby implicitly permitting the Jews of Livorno inducements to move to Marseilles.5 presence of Marranos. Three years later, heeding Among the notables associated with Livorno are R. Moses the advice of R. Judah Abravanel, Cosimo invited eastern Cordovero (1522–70), the renowned kabbalist, best known Jews to settle in the duchy. Later, more formal license to for his activity in Safed; R. Hayyim Joseph David Azulai dwell in Tuscany was issued in the form of la Livorna, the (Hida, 1724–1806), who was in Livorno for some time letters patent issued by Ferdinand I de’ Medici on June and printed several of his books there; the noted English 10, 1593, which guaranteed Marranos immunity from the philanthropist-statesman Sir Moses Montefiore (1784– Inquisition for past transgressions.1 The community, com- 1885); and R. Sabato Morais (1823–97), founder of the prised of Sephardim who came from Morocco, Turkey, Jewish Theological Seminary: the latter two were born in and the Balkans, plus several hundred Marranos, who Livorno.6 came directly from Portugal and Spain, soon became a Hebrew printing came relatively late to Livorno, given Mediterranean entropôt, linking Sephardic trade between the history of printing in Italy. Nevertheless, from the the Near East and North Africa.2 founding of the first press in 1650, the city’s print-shops By the mid-eighteenth century, Livorno had the sec- intermittently provided the Jewish communities around ond largest Jewish community in Western Europe after the Mediterranean with books for several hundred years, Amsterdam. Known as the Nazione Ebrea, Jews had con- into the second-half of the twentieth century. The first of siderable administrative and judicial autonomy and these presses was founded in 1650 by Jedidiah ben Isaac did not live in a ghetto.3 Marvin Lowenthal describes Gabbai. His father, Isaac ben Solomon, was the author of Kaf Nahat (Venice, 1609), a commentary on mishnayot. Jedidiah Gabbai called his print-shop after his father’s 1 For a general history of the Jewish community of Livorno, see Flora Aghib Levi d’Ancona, “The Sephardi Community of Leghorn (Livorno),” Sephardic Heritage, ed. R. D. Barnett and W. M. Schwab Book in Early Modern Italy, ed. Joseph Hacker and Adam Shear (Grendon, 1989), 2:180–202. Another valuable, albeit dated work (Philadelphia, 2011), 172. is Sabato Morais, “The History of the Jewish Congregation of 4 Lowenthal, A World Passed By, 257–58. Leghorn,” Menorah Monthly 11 (December 1891): 351–61. See also 5 Marcus Arkin, Aspects of Jewish Economic History (Philadelphia, Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 1975), 114, 124, and 128; Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 14 (New York, 1969), 91–93. 14:92. d’Ancona, “Sephardi Community of Leghorn (Livorno),” 184, 2 Howard M. Sachar, Farewell Espańa: The World of the Sephardim gives the population in 1645 as 2,000, noting that there was over- Remembered (New York, 1995), 230. crowding. Bregoli gives a figure of approximately 4,000 souls by the 3 Francesca Bregoli, “Hebrew Printing in Eighteenth-Century mid-eighteenth century. Livorno: From Government Control to a Free Market,” The Hebrew 6 Sachar, Farewell Espańa, 230–31.

figure 18.1a Shever ba-Mezarim commentary, La Stampa del Kaf Nahat. Gabbai did not publish a large number of books; he was active only to about 1658, but his publications are an interesting mix of liturgical works, such as azharot and mizmorim, Hebrew classics, several volumes of responsa, and a number of contemporary works.7 figure 18.1b Sha’ar Yoseph Abraham ben Raphael Meldola (1705–55), scion of a prominent Sephardic family, reestablished Hebrew print- Cambridge, both in 1750.8 Of interest is a small Hebrew ing in Livorno in 1740. Meldola printed more than thirty book (160, [22] ff.) of prayers (tehinnot) printed in 1742, Hebrew titles from 1740 to 1748, consisting of liturgical the year of the earthquakes, entitled Shever ba-Metzarim. works, novellae, responsa, halakhic titles, and Bible com- The vocalized title word is a play on metzarim (troubles, mentaries. These books are mainly original, that is, first distress); unvocalized it can be read as Mitzraim (Egypt), printings, rather than new editions of old works. Meldola as stated on the title page, “Jacob, our patriarch, when he also published non-Hebrew books for Marranos, many of ‘saw that there was grain in Egypt (shever ba-Mitzraim), whom had settled in Livorno. [Jacob] said to his sons [Why do you look one upon In January 1742 from the fifth (Friday, 29 Tevet 5502) another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there through the sixteenth (Tuesday 11 Shevat), Livorno expe- is grain in Egypt (shever ba-Mitzraim)]; get down there, rienced a series of earthquakes that reportedly left no major building undamaged. The earthquake was signifi- cant enough to be reported in several works, including two pamphlets, one published in London, the other in 8 Rev. Mr. Horton, An Account of the Earthquakes Which Happened at Leghorn in Italy, between the 5th and 16th of January, 1742 (London, 7 Concerning the Gabbai press, see Marvin J. Heller, “Jedidiah ben 1750); Zachary Grey, A Chronological and Historical Account of the Isaac Gabbai and the First Decade of Hebrew Printing in Livorno,” Most Memorable Earthquakes that Have Happened in the World, Los Muestros, pt. 1, no. 33 (1998): 40–41; pt 2, no. 34 (1999): 28–30, from the Beginning of the Christian Period to the Present Year 1750 reprinted in Studies, 165–77. (Cambridge, 1750), 76–78.