A Resurrection Controversy in Eighteenth-Century Italy

The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 2002, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 89–115

The Rimini Papers: A Resurrection Controversy in Eighteenth-Century Italy

David Malkiel Department of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University R.A., Ramet Gan, Israel

Apart from the fundamental issue of whether or not God would resurrect the dead at the end of days, which was the subject of the first Maimonidean controversy in the late twelfth century, medieval Jewish theologians also speculated about how this amazing miracle might be effected. Yet the intellectual leaders of Europe in the middle ages and early modern era – Jews and Christians – concentrated on the posthumous fate of soul, rather than body. Although the two issues are intertwined, there are few discussions of the nuts and bolts of resurrection, or for that matter scholarly treatments of the subject. A set of letters about resurrection, dated 1773, exchanged by four Italian Jews is, therefore, an unexpected and exciting discovery. The letters, located in the Moscow State Library, shed light on prevailing attitudes not only towards resurrection, but also towards religion, science and philosophy in general. Jewish thought in eighteenth-century Italy is a sparsely cultivated field, and from this perspective, too, the documents are highly illuminating. The most striking feature of the correspondence is the similarity between the ideas articulated by these Italian thinkers to those of English philosophers at the turn of the eighteenth century. Thus, the context of the discussion turns out to be surprisingly broad, geographically as well as culturally.

Authors and Texts

Tuscany was the hub of this epistolary activity. The authors of the letters are: Daniel (b. Moses David) Terni of Florence, Asher (b. Samson) Viterbo of Pesaro, Salomone (b. Judah) Fiorentino of Monte San Savino and Ephraim Joseph (b. David) Rimini of Florence. None of these men is well known today, and Asher Viterbo and Ephraim Joseph Rimini were unimportant even in their own time.1 Daniel Terni hailed from

1Viterbo was the second of three rabbinic signators to a fundraising letter on behalf of the Mantuan Jewish community, after its synagogue was damaged in an earthquake: Jerusalem, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, IT 946. Midbar Harim, by Matitia Nissim Terni, contains correspondence between the author and Asher Viterbo from 1799: see Midbar Matanah, Florence 1809/10. Marco Mortara cites a reference to Viterbo in Matitia Nissim Terni’s Sefat Emet (Livorno 1796/7), p. 82, but this seems to be an error: see Mortara, Indice Alfabetico dei rabbini e scrittori israeliti di cose giudaiche in italia, Padova 1886, p. 69. Rimini appears in a fewFlorentine archival sources: see Dora Liscia-Bemporad, ‘‘Due famiglie di gioellieri ebrei a Firenze tra Sette e Ottocento’’, Rassegna Mensile de Israel 60 (1993), p. 125. In 1771 he attempted to publish the collected dramatic works of Matitia Nissim Terni: Ibid., p. 130.

ISSN 1053-699X print; ISSN 1477-285X online/02/020089-27 ß 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1053699022000038732 90 D. Malkiel

Ancona and served as the community rabbi of Pesaro and later of Florence. Terni attracted attention for his Ikarei ha-Dinim (or ha-Da’’T, using his initials), a compila- tion of rulings, responsa and comments on the Shulhan ‘Arukh.2 Salomone Fiorentino (1743–1815) gained fame in 1790, following the publication_ of his Elegie, which he wrote following his wife’s death. He subsequently served as court poet to Grand Duke Ferdinand III. Like many other Jews, Fiorentino was forced to leave his home following the revolution of 1799; he ultimately settled in Livorno and taught Italian literature at the local Jewish academy. In addition to his poetry, which was printed repeatedly, Fiorentino’s Italian translation of the Sephardi prayer book was published in 1802.3 The letters are Ms. Moscow-Ginzburg 304/5, fols. 186r–206r.4 They are not autographs, but rather a copy, done in the neat hand of Rimini, the author of the fifth and last letter. The letters were composed in June and July, 1773. The first epistle is Terni’s reply to a query about resurrection. The second is Viterbo’s critique of Terni’s position, after Terni’s initial interlocutor (who is not named) forwarded him a copy of Terni’s answer, with a request for his opinion. In the third document, directed to Terni, Fiorentino critiques Viterbo’s position, following which, in the fourth text, Terni crafts his own response to Viterbo. The fifth and final letter is Rimini’s reaction to Terni’s first letter. Rimini writes that he acquired all the documents and copied the entire set. Terni’s first letter also appears in his collected responsa, Shuta de-Yanuka.5 This document has an opening annotation, stating that ‘‘after a fewyears I printed some

The Letters

Date From To 1 ? Daniel Terni ? 2 26 Sivan 5733 (17.VI.1773) Asher Viterbo ? 3 28.VII.1773 Salomone Fiorentino Daniel Terni 4 ? Daniel Terni Asher Viterbo 5 10 Av 5733 (30.VII.1773) Ephraim Joseph Rimini Daniel Terni

2Two sections of Ikarei ha-Dinim were printed in Florence in 1802/3 and 1805–6 respectively, consisting of numbered notes, which include numerous rulings by Terni himself. The following are among Terni’s other printed works: a liturgical compendium marking the salvation of the Florentine Jews from assault in June 1790 (Ketav ha-Dat, Livorno 1791); two collections of sermons (Se‘udat Mizvah, Venice 1791; Shem ’Olam, Piotrkow1929 2); a dramatic work in honor of the inauguration of the new_ synagogue of Florence (Simhat Mizvah, Florence 1793); and a set of discussions concerning gifts and charity (Matnat Yad, Florence 1794)._ A number_ of his manuscript works are located in the library of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem: collected responsa, entitled Shuta de-Yanuka (#4051); a collection of responsa by Terni and members of his circle (#4006); a collection of sermons (#4030), and a commentary on Lamentations, entitled Palgei Mayyim, dated 1781 (#4036). His Mishnah commentary is MS. Moscow-Ginzburg 361/19. None of these other works has received scholarly attention. 3See Odoardo De Montel, Sulla vita e sulle opere di Salamone Fiorentino, Firenze 1852; Sergio Romagnoni, ‘‘Salomone Fiorentino tra fede, impegno civile ed elegia’’, Italia Judaica 3 (1989), pp. 153–164; Roberto G. Salvadori, ‘‘Salomone Fiorentino (Monte San Savino, 4 marzo 1743 – Firenze, 4 febbraio 1815)’’, Gli ebrei a Monte San Savino, Monte San Savino 1994, pp. 91–101. See also Idem, ‘‘Famiglie ebraiche di Monte San Savino (1627–1799), attivita` economiche e rapporti sociali’’, Zakhor 2 (1998), p. 146. 4Thanks are due to Benjamin Richler, of the Institute of Microfilmed HebrewManuscripts (Jerusalem), for drawing my attention to these texts. 5MS. Jerusalem-Ben-Zvi Institute 4051, §59, fols. 86v–89r. This manuscript may be an autograph, as its contents were written on different sizes and types of paper, in different handwritings, and therefore at different times. It has a table of contents, which states that this letter was directed to Asher Viterbo, but this is probably untrue, since the heading to the second letter in the Moscowcollection states that Viterbo wroteit after ‘‘being shown’’ Terni’s letter, which implies that he was not the addressee of Terni’s first letter. The error is not surpris- ing, for the table of contents also errs in referring to the letter as responsum §55, rather than §59.