Sefer Eleh Bnei HaNeurim. Poetry by Ephraim Luzzatto.
Vienna, 1839. Hebrew with some Italian.
Original blue wrapper with beautiful dedication by Chacham Josepe Almanzi (signed Jo”el =Joseph Almanzi) Ish Padua.
The dedication is to his friend Yitzchak Luzzatto & is written in the form of a poem. It’s dated 1858 when he already lived in his later years in Trieste.
Chacham Joseph (Giuseppe) Almanzi (1801-1860) was an Italian Jewish bibliophile and poet. He was the first researcher of the history of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto- the Ramcha”l, and the first in importance.
Almanzi was born in Padua, the eldest son of Baruch Hayyim Almanzi, a wealthy merchant. He received a good education by private tutors, one of whom was Chacham Israel Conian. According to the Italian custom, he began at an early age to write Hebrew poems on special occasions. At the age of twenty he was a devoted student of Jewish literature and an ardent collector of Hebrew books. Rare books and manuscripts that he could not purchase he copied. He had a good command over the Hebrew, Italian, Latin, German, and French languages, and is said also to have known Syriac.
His tastes as a bibliophile were fed by the large and well-selected library formerly belonging to Rabbi Chaim Joseph David Azulai- the Chid”a, which his father had bought from Azulai’s son, Rabbi Raphael Isaiah, at Ancona. This library was largely increased by Joseph Almanzi, its rare editions and manuscripts making it one of the most important in private possession. Its treasures were freely used by Luzzatto, Steinschneider, Zunz, and others. During the last few years of his life Almanzi lived at Trieste, where he took a lively interest in all communal affairs.
Few of Almanzi’s poems have been published. He was a graceful writer, and, above all, a clever translator into Biblical Hebrew of the poems of the great Italian authors. After his death S. D. Luzzatto published a number of his Hebrew letters and of his poems, in a collection entitled Yad Yosef (‘The Hand of Joseph’, Cracow and Triest, 1889).
He left a number of Hebrew poems in manuscript, among them translations from Horace. Almanzi’s family published in his honour a catalogue of his Hebrew library, which was compiled by his lifelong friend Luzzatto, who also wrote a preface. Luzzatto had already described the manuscripts of the collection in the Hebräische Bibliographie of Steinschneider. The greater part of the manuscripts were bought by the British Museum; the collection of rare books found its way to the bookseller Frederik Müller in Amsterdam, and was bought in 1868 by the trustees of Temple Emanu-El in New York City, who in 1893 presented it to the library of Columbia University.
Yitzchak Luzzatto of Trieste was a doctor & accomplished poet in his own right.
Back of title page with self-dedication by Rabbi Emmanuel Sofer (Emil Schreiber) of Trieste who received the sefer from his grandfather Yeshayahu Sinigaglia in 1927.
Rabbi Emilio Schreiber was born in Verona in 1872. Educated in Trieste where he was director of the local Talmud Toràh, in 1929 he moved to Milan to become the first director of the Jewish schools transferred from the original headquarters in Via Disciplini to the new building in Via Eupili 6. He married Lina Ulman, He died in Trieste in 1941.
pp. 80, [4]. 15.3 Cm.
Good Condition, light wear to corners, light stains, original blue wrappers.
Ephraim Luzzatto (1729-1792) was an Italian-Jewish physician and poet. He began his medical studies at the University of Padua in 1742 and was granted his medical degree in 1751. In addition to his university studies, he engaged in writing poetry in Hebrew and Italian. In 1763, Luzzatto moved to London, where he served as a physician at the community hospital of the Portuguese Jewish community for approximately thirty years. His sefer \"Eileh B\'nei HaNe\'urim, \" which contains poems he wrote during his time in Italy, was first published in London in 1768. Isaac Satanov published a portion of the poems that appeared in \"Eileh B\'nei HaNe\'urim\" in a new edition called \"Kol Shachal\" (Berlin, 1790), and as was his custom, he made changes and omitted parts of the poems. The edition presented here, faithful to the original, was published by Meir Halevi Letteris, who criticized Satanov\'s alterations in his introduction to the book.
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