1. Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, Shneim-Asar Derashot (Jerusalem, 1959; reprint of Warsaw, 1876 ed. [for a reason that escapes me, the Warsaw edition identified the author as “MaHaR I Mintz,” leading to confusion with the fifteenth-century Talmudic scholar R. Judah Mintz]), p. 21b (page references are to the “Arabic” numerals). See also p. 58a, a eulogy for R. Joseph Karo: “After that I went into a recounting of the praise of the deceased ga’on,” and p. 61a, a eulogy for R. Zalman Katz of Mantua: “After that I began to recount the praise of the deceased ẓaddik.” Despite its elliptic character, the eulogy for Karo contains some important historical information. See Robert Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut be-Italyah bi-Tekufat ha-Renesans (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 194. That the elimination of material about the deceased from the written eulogy was not unique to Katzenellenbogen can be seen from Azariah Figo’s eulogy for Abraham Aboab, Binah le-Ittim (Warsaw, 1866), sermon 75, p. 122c: “I spoke at length on some other such aspects of his personal behavior; I have not written it at length.” [BACK]

2. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, 1988), pp. 18–21. [BACK]

3. Mark Cohen, ed., The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi (Princeton, 1988; henceforth Autobiography), pp. 95, 102. In July of 1991, Dr. Benjamin Richler, of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem, informed me of the recent discovery of a manuscript of sermons apparently by Leon Modena. [BACK]

4. Abraham Portaleone, epilogue to Shiltei Gibborim (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 185c. JTS MS Rab 172 was a collection of sermons written “by one of the scholars from the Provençal family in Mantua,” and acquired by Leon Modena in Venice in 1595. While some are not without interest, they do not seem to be the work of a master preacher of Moscato’s rank, and there were many other members of the family who could have written them. [BACK]

5. Umberto Cassuto, “Un rabbino fiorentino del secolo XV,” Rivista Israelitica 3 (1906): 116–128, 224–228; 4 (1907): 33–37, 156–161, 225–229. [BACK]

6. For a general discussion of the tendency to omit historical references from sermon texts prepared for publication, or to refer to events in a general manner that assumes knowledge by the listener but raises problems for the historian, see my Jewish Preaching 1200–1800 (New Haven, 1989), pp. 80–84 and the passage by Azariah Figo cited on p. 86. See also the historical events mentioned by the fifteenth-century preacher Moses ben Joab of Florence in Cassuto, “Un rabbino fiorentino,” Rivista Israelitica 3 (1906): 117–118, and his statement cited in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 18. [BACK]

7. On Cantarini, see Zalman Shazar, Ha-Tikvah li-Shenat HaTak (Jerusalem, 1970), especially pp. 13–15, 18. Another massive manuscript (376 folios) of sermons that, to my knowledge, has not been studied is by Samuel ben Elisha Portaleone: British Library Add. 27, 123. Eliezer Nahman Foa, a disciple of Menahem Azariah of Fano, left four manuscript volumes entitled “Goren Ornan” (Mantua M. 59; Jerusalem Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts 842–845), but these are closer to homiletical commentaries than actual sermons. The only extant collection of Jewish sermons larger than Cantarini’s from before the nineteenth century are the manuscripts of Saul Levi Morteira of Amsterdam. [BACK]

8. Henry Sosland, A Guide for Preachers on Composing and Delivering Sermons: The OR HA-DARSHANIM of Jacob Ẓahalon (New York, 1987). [BACK]

9. Columbia University MS X893 T15 Q; the text was written in Florence in 1627. See Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut, p. 192; Sosland, Guide, pp. 82–83n. [BACK]

10. Examples from Italy include “Kol Ya’akov” by Jacob ben Kalonymos Segal (Columbia University MS X893 J151 Q; see Bonfil, Ha-Rabbanut, pp. 192–193; Sosland, Guide, pp. 83–84n), Leon Modena’s “Beit Leḥem Yehudah,” an index to Ein Ya’akov (see Autobiography, p. 226), and Jacob Ẓahalon’s alphabetical index to Yalkut Shimoni (see Sosland, Guide, pp. 73–76). For other such preacher aids by Jews, see Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 16–17, 286. [BACK]

11. See Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 66–78. [BACK]

12. Joseph ben Ḥayyim of Benevento, Parma Hebrew MS 2627 (De’ Rossi, 1398). [BACK]

13. Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching: Middle Ages (Cincinnati, 1939), p. 196; Isaac Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith (The Hague and Paris, 1967), pp. 168–169; Isaac Rabinowitz, The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow (Ithaca, 1983), pp. liv–lx; Alexander Altmann, “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Sosland, Guide, pp. 105–107, n. 14, all emphasize the citations of classical rhetoricians by Jewish writers. Joseph Dan, Sifrut ha-Musar ve-ha-Derush (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 190–197 argues that Moscato’s sermons should be seen more in the context of the internal Jewish homiletical tradition. I tend to agree with Dan; see the example of continuity in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 71–72. [Cf. Moshe Idel’s essay in this volume.—Ed.] [BACK]

14. On the forced conversionary sermon in Italy, see S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 18 vols. (Philadelphia, New York, 1952–1983), vol. 14, pp. 50–51, 323–324, n. 47; Kenneth Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy (New York, 1977), pp. 19–21. I am not aware of any study of the actual rhetorical techniques of these sermons. [BACK]

15. Ingrid D. Rowland, “Egidio da Viterbo’s Defense of Pope Julius II, 1509 and 1511,” in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. Thomas Amos, Eugene Green and Beverly Kienzle (Kalamazoo, Mich. 1989), pp. 250, 260. Cf. Isaac Arama’s description of Spanish Jews impressed by the sermons of Christian preachers and demanding a higher level from their own rabbis: introduction to Akedat Yiẓḥak, trans. in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 393. [BACK]

16. Autobiography, pp. 96, 117. See Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 26, 51, n. 19, and Isaac min ha-Levi’im, Sefer Medabber Tahapukhot, ed. Daniel Carpi (Jerusalem, 1985), p. 80. For Montaigne’s description of a Jewish sermon he heard in Italy, see Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 9.; for Giordano Bruno’s praise of a contemporary Jewish preacher, see Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 36, 342. [BACK]

17. In the Church of San Geremia: Autobiography, p. 109; see also his letter cited by Yosef Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York, 1971), pp. 353–354. [BACK]

18. Modo di comporre una predica, by Panigarola (Venice, 1603); see Clemento Ancona, “L’inventario dei beni di Leon da Modena,” Bolletino dell’istituto di storia della società e dello stato veneziano 10 (1967): 265–266. I am grateful to Howard Adelman for bringing this article to my attention. Modena himself claims to have written a work called Matteh Yehudah “on how to compose a well-ordered sermon” (Sosland, Guide, p. 82, n. 1). [See Joanna Weinberg’s essay in this volume.—Ed.] [BACK]

19. See Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 411–412. [BACK]

20. Examples of book-length studies include John O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham, N.C., 1979); Roberto Rusconi, Predicazione e vita religiosa nella società italiana: Da Carlo Magno alla controriforma (Turin, 1981); Carlo Delcorno, Exemplum e letteratura: Tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Bologna, 1989); Daniel Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, Ga. 1989); B. T. Paton, Custodians of the Civic Conscience: Preaching Friars and the Communal Ethos in Late Medieval Siena (Oxford, 1989). There have also been monumental editions of sermons by the greatest preachers, such as Bernardino da Siena’s Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989). [BACK]

21. Joseph Sermoneta, “Dante,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 5, p. 1295. This was apparently based on Cecil Roth’s assertion that “Any person with the slightest pretext to education was familiar with Dante and with Petrarch. Rabbis quoted them in their sermons” (The Jews in the Renaissance, p. 33; note the addition of “widely” in the EJ statement). But Roth does not provide a single example of a sermon in which either Dante or Petrarch was quoted. For a more balanced treatment of Jewish knowledge of Italian literature, which does not address its use in sermons, see Moses Shulvass, The Jews in the World of the Renaissance (Leiden, 1973), pp. 230–231. [BACK]

22. Joseph Dan, “Iyyun be-Sifrut ha-Derush ha-Ivrit bi-Tekufat ha-Renesans be-Italyah,” Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1973), division 3, p. 108. [But compare Moshe Idel’s essay below.—Ed.] [BACK]

23. For the stories of Modena, see Midbar Yehudah (Venice, 1602), pp. 15a, 76b–77a; Saperstein, “Stories in Jewish Sermons (The 15th–16th Centuries),” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1986), division 3, pp. 105–106; Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 98–99, 342–343. The literature on Christian attitudes toward death in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is enormous; see Alberto Tenenti, Sense de la mort et amour de la vie (L’Harmattan, 1983, from the Italian ed. of 1957); Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture (New York, 1990, from the French ed. of 1983). While the idea that this world was the “land of the dead” was something of a topos (e.g. Delumeau, pp. 352–353, 459), Modena’s story is different from most in that it does not use the macabre (involving the putrefaction of the corpse), or the theme of memento mori, but simply the claim that death is true life as its summons to renunciation of this world. Cf. Innocenzo Ringhieri’s Dialoghi della vita e della morte (Bologna, 1550), set in a cemetery, in which Death serves as a guide to eternal bliss (discussed by Tenenti, pp. 270–271). [BACK]

24. David Ruderman, “An Exemplary Sermon from the Classroom of a Jewish Teacher in Renaissance Italy,” Italia 1 (1978): 7–38. Robert Bonfil, “Shteim-Esrei Iggerot me’et R. Eliyahu b’R. Shelomoh Raphael ha-Levi (de Veali),” Sinai 71 (1972): 167, 184–185. [BACK]

25. Simḥah Assaf, Mekorot le-Toledot ha-Ḥinukh be-Yisra’el. 4 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1930–1950), vol. 2, pp. 157, 177. [BACK]

26. See the text in Assaf, vol. 2, p. 119, paragraph 12, translated in Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World (New York, 1965), p. 386. [BACK]

27. Autobiography, pp. 85–86; see also Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 405–406. [BACK]

28. For example, Medabber Tahapukhot, pp. 48–50, 62–63, 74–76, 78–79, 82–83, 104–106. [BACK]

29. David Kaufmann, “The Dispute about the Sermons of David del Bene of Mantua,” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (1895–1896): 513–527. See also the responsa of Leon Modena on philosophical and kabbalistic content in sermons, in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, pp. 406–408. [BACK]

30. The manuscript sermons of Mordecai Dato; see Robert Bonfil, “Aḥat mi-Derashotav shel R. Mordekai Dato,” Italia 1 (1976): 1–32; Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 41 (and the reservation in n. 41). [BACK]

31. Autobiography, pp. 101–102, 209 n.r, and the letter translated in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 411. In his introduction to Midbar Yehudah, Modena speaks of a glut of sermon collections on the market that diminishes their value in the eyes of potential buyers (pp. 3a–b, cited in Israel Rosenzweig, Hogeh Yehudah Mi-keẓ ha-Renesans [Tel Aviv, 1972], p. 45). [BACK]

32. See the examples cited in Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 22. [BACK]

33. See my discussion of the methodological issues in “Sermons and Jewish Society: The Case of Prague,” in a volume to be published by the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, and edited by Bernard Cooperman. [BACK]

34. See Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 52 and n. 23. [BACK]

35. Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, p. 48. [BACK]

36. Cf. Thomas Izbicki, “Pyres of Vanities: Mendicant Preaching on the Vanity of Women and Its Lay Audience,” in De Ore Domini, pp. 211–234, esp. pp. 215–216, 219 on hairstyles and false hair. [BACK]

37. Shneim-Asar Derashot, p. 9b; see also Gedaliah Nigal, “Derashotav shel Shemu’el Yehudah Katzenellenbogen,” Sinai 36 (1971–1972): 82. For other examples of Christian behavior used by Jewish preachers as a model worthy of emulation, see my “Christians and Jews—Some Positive Images,” in Christians Among Jews and Gentiles, ed. George Nickelsburg (Philadelphia, 1986) (Harvard Theological Review 19, nos. 1–3 [1986]: 236–246). [BACK]

39. Binah le-Ittim, 48, p. 43b. [BACK]

40. See my “Sermons and Jewish Society” (above, n. 33). [BACK]

41. Needless to say, such passages from sermons need to be integrated with other types of literature, especially the contemporary responsa, before responsible conclusions about actual Jewish behavior (as opposed to the consciousness of the religious leadership) can be drawn. [BACK]

42. Binah le-Ittim, 10, p. 33d; cf. Bettan, p. 239. [BACK]

43. Binah le-Ittim, 10, p. 33d. On the complexity of the legal issues relating to the cambio, see Stephen Passamaneck, Insurance in Rabbinic Law (Edinburgh, 1974). For fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian Christian moralists and preachers and their distrust of “letters of exchange” as an attempt to camouflage illicit interest-bearing loans, see Delumeau, Sin and Fear, pp. 224–225; for the earlier period, see Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence, pp. 119–121. [BACK]

44. Cassuto, “Un rabbino fiorentino,” Rivista Israelitica 4 (1907): 226–227. The last sentence alludes to Prov. 18:22, “One who has found a wife has found something good,” frequently used as an ornament on Italian marriage contracts. The elements of humor and wit in Italian Jewish preaching (and in Jewish preaching in general) deserve careful study. [BACK]

45. Shneim-Asar Derashot, p. 10a. The study of Jewish child-rearing practices (as distinct from more formal Jewish education) and their relationship with those of contemporary Christian neighbors (for example, whether the conclusions of Phillippe Ariès and his critics have any relevance to the Jewish family) has hardly begun. Pertinent to this passage would be Ariès’s claim of a shift in the early modern period from a rather careless indifference toward the child to a regimen involving constant surveillance (Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life [New York, 1962, from the French ed. of 1960], pp. 94–97). [BACK]

46. For example, Modena’s eulogy for his mother delivered at the end of the thirty-day mourning period (Midbar Yehudah, pp. 51a–55a); see also Penina Nave, Yehudah Aryeh mi-Modena, Leket Ketavim (Jerusalem, 1968), pp. 143–144. Katzenellenbogen indicates that the prevalent taste considered it inappropriate to discuss in a eulogy the closeness of personal friendship between the preacher and the deceased, but he defends his decision to do so anyway (Shneim-Asar Derashot, pp. 30a–31a). For recent studies of Italian Christian eulogies, see John McManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989) and the articles by McManamon and Donald Weinstein in Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald Witt, and Rona Geffen (Durham, N.C., 1989), pp. 68–104. [see Elliott Horowitz’s essay below.—Ed.] [BACK]

47. Judah Moscato, Nefuẓot Yehudah (Warsaw, 1871), sermon 36, pp. 97c–98a, 99d. [BACK]

48. See Sosland, Guide, p. 26. [BACK]

49. Shneim-Asar Derashot, p. 63b. [BACK]

50. Autobiography, pp. 109, 41–42. [BACK]

51. Binah le-Ittim, pp. 13d–14a. Cf. the Florentine preacher Jacob di Alba, Toledot Ya’akov (Venice, 1609), p. 85a:

We might say, How lonely does she sit (Lam. 1:1): the city of God that descended to earth and became like a widow sitting on the ground, bereft of all distinction. But with regard to taxes and exactions, they perform a creation ex nihilo upon her; she is great among the nations, a princess among the states (Lam. 1:1), for she has existed only so that taxes might be taken from her, making something out of nothing. So it is, in our sins, at present: Jerusalem must pay many kinds of taxes, and if they did not send emissaries from various places, the inhabitants would not be able to endure.

52. Modena, She’elot u-Teshuvot Ziknei Yehudah, ed. Shlomo Simonsohn (Jerusalem, 1957), p. 126. The context is a halakhic question sent to him asking whether it was permissible for a preacher to turn over an hourglass on the Sabbath to time the sermon so that it would not be a burden on the congregation. For the use of the hourglass by Christian preachers, see Jewish Preaching 1200–1800, p. 38, n. 33. [BACK]