1. See Meir Benayahu, ed., Toledot Ha-Ari (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 319–320. [BACK]

2. See Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 218–219. [BACK]

3. Cf. Solomon Schechter, “Notes sur Messer David Léon,” Revue des études juives 23 (1892): 126. It should be mentioned that in contemporary Spain the study of Kabbalah was part of the curriculum of some yeshivot; see Joseph Hacker, “On the Intellectual Character and Self-Perception of Spanish Jewry in the Late Fifteenth Century” [Hebrew], Sefunot 2, no. 17 (1983): 52–56. [BACK]

4. See Moshe Idel, “Between the Concept of Sefirot as Essence or Instrument in the Renaissance Period,” [Hebrew] Italia 3 (1982): 91 and note 16. [BACK]

5. Ibid., pp. 89–90. [BACK]

6. See Moshe Idel, “The Study Program of R. Yohanan Alemanno” [Hebrew], Tarbiẓ 48 (1979): 330–331. [BACK]

7. See Moshe Idel, “Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560–1660,” Italia Judaica (Rome, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 248–249. [BACK]

8. See e.g. Kol Yehudah (Warsaw, 1880), book 4, section 86, fol. 63a. The profound influence of the “Divine Chapters,” as Moscato calls Kafmann’s book, is an issue that should preoccupy any serious study of Moscato’s thought. [BACK]

9. See Ephraim Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature, ed. Joseph Hacker [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1976), pp. 357–369. [BACK]

10. See e.g. Sefer Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut (Mantua, 1558), fol. 61b. [BACK]

11. Ibid., fol. 3b–4a. [BACK]

12. See e.g. Kol Yehudah, book 3, fol. 71b; book 4, fols. 24ab, 64a. [BACK]

13. See Isaiah Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 79–130. [BACK]

14. See David Kaufmann, “Contributions à l’histoire des luttes d‘Azariah de’Rossi,” Revue des études juives 33 (1896): 81–83. [BACK]

15. See Robert Bonfil, “Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de’ Rossi’s Meor Einayim in the Cultural Milieu of the Italian Jewish Renaissance,” Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 23–48. [BACK]

16. See David Kaufmann, “The Dispute about the Sermons of David del Bene of Mantua,” Jewish Quarterly Review o.s. 8 (1896): 513–524; and see Robert Bonfil’s essay in this volume. [BACK]

17. Ibid., p. 516, n. 3. [BACK]

18. Ibid., pp. 518–519. [BACK]

19. Ibid., p. 518. [BACK]

20. Bonfil, “Some Reflections,” pp. 28–29. [BACK]

21. See Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, trans. M. Cook (Chicago, London, 1987), p. 21. [BACK]

22. Bonfil, “Some Reflections,” p. 36. [BACK]

23. In the following, I use the edition of Warsaw, 1871. [BACK]

24. See below, note 29. [BACK]

25. I use the Warsaw 1880 edition. [BACK]

26. See note 29 below. [BACK]

27. See the detailed presentation of the two views and the pertinent bibliography in Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven, London, 1989), pp. 39–43. [BACK]

28. Robert Bonfil, Rabbis and the Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1990), pp. 301–302: “Throughout this period Jewish sermons were delivered in Italian as was the practice in the Christian milieu.”

See also the evidence related to a sermon of Shlomo Molkho delivered in Mantua, which was attended not only by Jewish adults but by Christians and children as well, a definitive proof that Spanish or Italian was the language of the sermon; cf. Saperstein, ibid., p. 51, n. 19, and Moshe Idel, “An Unknown Sermon of Shlomo Molkho” [Hebrew], in Exile and Diaspora, Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Prof. Haim Beinart, ed. Aaron Mirsky, Abraham Grossman, Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem, 1988), p. 431; there is still further evidence that each time Molkho preached in Rome princes and priests and a multitude of people attended, again a convincing indication of the language of his sermons. See also the text printed in A. Z. Aescoli, Jewish Messianic Movements [Hebrew], 2d ed. (Jerusalem, 1987), p. 409. Another bit of evidence, found in a neglected manuscript of Rabbi Jacob Mantino, regarding the use of Italian as the language of preaching at the middle of the sixteenth century, will be discussed elsewhere. From the evidence related to the sermons of David del Bene in Mantua, it seems reasonable to assume that they were also delivered in Italian; see Kaufmann, “The Dispute,” p. 518. [BACK]

29. See Joseph Dan, “The Sermon Tefillah ve-Dim‘ah of R. Judah Moscato” [Hebrew], Sinai 76 (1975): 209–232; idem, “The Homiletic Literature and Its Literary Values” [Hebrew], Ha-Sifrut 3 (1972): 558–567. [BACK]

30. Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), vol. 12, col. 358: “It is possible that Moscato preached both in Hebrew and in Italian.…However, the sermons collected in Nefuẓot Yehudah were undoubtedly delivered in Hebrew.” [BACK]

31. See Joseph Dan, “No Evil Descends from Heaven,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, p. 103. Dan asserts that Cordovero’s and Moscato’s thought had created a gap between theology and the communal and personal experience of Jews, and this gap was overcome by the Lurianic myth at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, I assume that, in any case, Moscato’s views were understood only by the very few, and those of Luria by even fewer persons. Whether mythical Lurianism prevailed at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Italy or not is an issue still to be proven. See also below note 85. [BACK]

32. See Shlomo Pines, “Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb? Some Jewish and Arabic Sources of Leone Ebreo’s Doctrines,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, p. 390. [BACK]

33. See his “Medieval Jewish Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,” in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 106–145, especially pp. 130–132. [BACK]

34. Hebrew Ethical and Homiletical Literature [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 191–193. The same ideas were repeated again in his “An Inquiry into the Jewish Homiletic Literature of the Renaissance Period in Italy” [Hebrew], Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1977), division 3, pp. 105–110. [BACK]

35. See e.g. Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati, 1939), p. 192, where he describes Moscato as “a child of the Renaissance.” More recently this view was also embraced by R. Bonfil. I take this view as well. On the general influence of Renaissance culture on the Jews see David B. Ruderman, “The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations and Forms, 3 vols., ed. A. Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia, 1988), vol. 1, pp. 382–433. As against these emphases regarding the influence of the Renaissance see the view of Dan, Hebrew Ethical and Homiletical Literature, p. 183, where he expresses the opinion that the Renaissance influence on Jewish literature was peripheral. [BACK]

36. Fols. 21c–22b. [BACK]

37. In addition to Dan’s opinions related to this sermon, note 34 above, see also Isaac E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith, Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague, Paris, 1967), p. 173; Alexander Altmann, “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance,” Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 19–20. Although all of these scholars are aware of Moscato’s quotation from Pico, none of them undertake a comparison of Moscato’s sermon with Pico’s Commento. [BACK]

38. Bereshit Rabbah, vol. 3, p. 4, ed. J. Theodor and H. Albeck (Jerusalem, 1965), p. 19. For a detailed analysis of the meaning of this Midrashic text as hinting at emanation and its reverberation in kabbalah see Alexander Altmann, “A Note on the Rabbinic Doctrine of Creation,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 6/7 (1955/1956): 195–206. [BACK]

39. On this issue in medieval Jewish texts see Moshe Idel, “The Journey to Paradise” [Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Folklore 2 (1982): 7–16. [BACK]

40. Dan, Hebrew Ethical and Homiletical Literature, p. 193. Dan’s assumption that Moscato’s reference to a Christological concept should automatically be construed as negative is unfounded. See e.g. the moderate attitude toward Christology of Moscato’s contemporary, Solomon Modena, in David B. Ruderman, “A Jewish Apologetic Treatise from Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” Hebrew Union College Annual 50 (1979): 265. [BACK]

41. Alul. The very use of this term shows that it is a created, non-divine being to which Moscato refers. It should be mentioned that the question of the origin of Pico’s view of the “first creature” is rather complex. The concept that the first created entity is an intelligible creature that includes in itself all the forms of existence is reminiscent of Rabbi Isaac ibn Latif’s view of nivra rishon. As I have proposed elsewhere, Pico was acquainted with the major work of ibn Latif, Sefer Sha‘ar ha-Shamayim, where the above phrase recurs. See Moshe Idel, “The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola’s Hebrew Source,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): 290–292. Moscato does use the term alul rishon, which though conceptually identical to nivra rishon, differs from it terminologically. In his later work, Kol Yehudah, however, he quotes ibn Latif extensively, including texts wherein the term nivra rishon is mentioned; see e.g. book 4, 25, p. 49a, which does not refer to the topic of our sermon. On the history of ibn Latif’s concept see Sarah O. Heller Willensky, “The ‘First Created Being’ in Early Kabbalah and Its Philosophical Sources” [Hebrew], in Studies in Jewish Thought, ed. S. O. Heller Willensky and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 261–275. See also below note 46; Pico’s prima creatura is a perfect translation of ibn Latif’s term. [BACK]

42. Dan, in his analysis of this text, used a late and unreliable edition, Lemberg, 1859, where there is what I assume to be a printing error, and in lieu of “Yoan,” “Yoel” is printed, a shift easily understandable to readers of Hebrew. On the basis of this change Dan (Hebrew Ethical and Homiletical Literature, p. 192) decided that Moscato wanted to Judaise Pico. Though this may have been the intention of the unknown late Polish proofreader, it was not Moscato’s. As we shall see immediately below, at least in this context Moscato refrains from Judaizing pagan authors. [BACK]

43. This spelling is found also in Moscato’s Kol Yehudah, book 4, 3, p. 11b. Here we find another reference to Pico’s Commento, which is worthy of a detailed discussion in its own right. [BACK]

44. Fols. 21c–21d. [BACK]

45. Commento sopra una canzona d’amore di Girolamo Benivieni, chap. 4, in Opera Omnia (Basle, 1557), vol. 1, p. 899. [BACK]

46. See ibid.:

Questa prima mente creata, da Platone e così dalli antichi philosophi Mercurio Trimegista e Zoroastre è chiamato hora figluolo de Dio, hora mente, hora Sapientia, hora ragione Divina.…Et habbi ciascuno diligente advertentia di non credere che questo sia quello che de nostri Theologie è ditto figluolo di Dio, imperochè noi intendiamo per il figluolo di Dio una medesima essentia col padre, à lui in ogni cosa equale, creatore finalmente e non creatura, me debbesi comparare quello che Platonici chiamano figluolo di Dio, al primo e più nobile angelo da Dio prodotto.

There are some significant variae lectionum between this edition and that printed by Eugenio Garin, De Hominis Dignitate,…(Florence, 1942), pp. 466–467. In many respects Garin’s version seems to be closer to Moscato’s; the most important of them is that in lieu of the phrase “prima mente creata” Garin’s version has “prima creatura.” See above note 41.

On this text see Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1989), pp. 198–200. Wirszubski adduced a very interesting parallel to the passage in the Commento from one of Pico’s Theses where the filius Dei of Mercurio, namely Hermes Trismegistus, is mentioned together with Zoroaster’s paterna mens, Parmenides’ sphera intelligibilis, Pythagoras’ sapientia and, according to Wirszubski’s very plausible reconstruction, with the Kabbalistic Metatron, without even mentioning the Christian theological view. On Kabbalistic speculations concerning the “divine son” see Yehuda Liebes, “Christian Influences in the Zohar,” Immanuel 17 (1983/1984): 51–59. [BACK]

47. See Wirszubski, pp. 198–199. [BACK]

48. The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (New York, 1969), vol. 1, p. 243. [BACK]

49. B. Sanhedrin, 38b. [BACK]

50. Ms. Vatican 192, fol. 76a; Ms. Munich 58, fol. 153a. On this treatise see Colette Sirat, “Les differentes versions du Liwyat Hen de Levi ben Abraham,” Revue des études juives 122 (1963): 167–177. On Abraham Abulafia’s understanding of Son, Metatron and separate intellect and that of one of his followers, the anonymous author of Sefer ha-Ẓeruf, see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, pp. 213–234. See the early Hebrew version of this discussion in Chaim Wirszubski, Three Studies in Christian Kabbala (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 53–55. [BACK]

51. Me’or Einayim, Imrei Binah, chap. 3, p. 101. [BACK]

52. On this issue see Joanna Weinberg, “The Quest for Philo in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Historiography,” Jewish History, Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky (London, 1988), pp. 171–172. [BACK]

53. See Poimandres 1, 12–13ff. I have already pointed out that Hermetic influences on Jewish literature are found in a long series of texts in the Middle Ages, most of them, or perhaps all of them, through the intermediary of Arabic sources. See Moshe Idel, “Hermeticism and Judaism” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (London, Toronto, 1988), pp. 59–76. Jewish authors living in the Renaissance, however, like Isaac Abravanel, Moscato, de’ Rossi, and Abraham Yagel, were influenced by Hermetic literature translated by Marsilio Ficino. Characteristically enough, de’ Rossi intended to translate some portions of the Hermetic corpus into Hebrew. I assume that the Jewish interest in Hermetic writings has something to do not only with the Renaissance passion regarding this literature but also with the feeling corroborated by some modern studies that there is a certain similarity between Jewish and Hermetic ideas. See the pertinent bibliography in my aforementioned article. [BACK]

54. For the history of this concept see Harry A. Wolfson, “Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas,” in Religious Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 27–68; and see also Idel, “The Magical and Platonic Interpretations,” pp. 223–227. [BACK]

55. On Torah as the intellectual universe see Moshe Idel, Language, Torah and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia (Albany, 1989), pp. 29–38. [BACK]

56. Ernst Cassirer, “Some Remarks on the Question of the Originality of the Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943): 49–56; Couliano, Eros and Magic, p. 12. [BACK]

57. I propose to see in Pico and Ficino the Renaissance founders of a multilinear conception of religious and philosophical truth, an issue to be elaborated in my forthcoming treatment of the topic. For the time being see the bibliography mentioned by Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, p. 198, n. 41. [BACK]

58. The great majority of Renaissance Jews adhered to the medieval, unilinear conception of prisca theologia. See Moshe Idel, “Kabbalah and Philosophy in Isaac and Yehudah Abravanel” [Hebrew], in The Philosophy of Leone Ebreo, ed. M. Dorman and Z. Levi (Tel Aviv, 1985), pp. 73–112, especially pp. 84–86. [BACK]

59. This conclusion holds also in the case of Abraham Yagel, Moscato’s younger contemporary; see David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988), pp. 139–160; idem, A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 23–68. [BACK]

60. See his Kol Yehudah, book 2, fol. 76a. I shall discuss this passage in an appendix to my aforementioned study of the concept of prisca theologia. [BACK]

61. See note 50 above. [BACK]

62. See Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, p. 199; idem, Three Studies in Christian Kabbala, p. 56. [BACK]

63. Sermon 5. Cf. the translation of Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, pp. 201–202. This statement should be compared with de’ Rossi’s plan to write an introduction to a proposed translation of two of the most important portions of the Hermetic corpus, there distinguishing between the holy and the profane. If the term profane stands for the “magical” part of Hermeticism, as Weinberg proposes, then de’ Rossi concurs with Moscato’s reticence in elaborating upon magic and theurgy. See Weinberg, “The Quest for Philo,” n. 56. This awareness of the need for selectivity insofar as the pagan material is concerned shows that we are dealing with a moderate reception of Renaissance culture in both cases. On moderate adoption of the Renaissance among Jews see Moses A. Shulvass, “The Knowledge of Antiquity among the Italian Jews of the Renaissance,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 18 (1948/49): 299. [BACK]

64. Sermon 3, fol. 9c. [BACK]

65. Kol Yehudah, book 4, 25, pp. 50a, 53ab. [BACK]

66. Dar stems from the root dur, which is related to both the idea of dwelling and to the idea of circularity. Since God is defined as a circle, the last Sefirah was described, using the terminology of Joseph Gikatilla, the author of Sha‘arei Ẓedek, as the circle where the sefirah of tiferet, the Lord, dwells in residence. See also below note 78. [BACK]

67. Nefuẓot Yehudah, p. 80a. [BACK]

68. Ibid., p. 81a; see also below note 78. [BACK]

69. See Joseph Gikatilla’s Commentary on Ezekiel’s Chapter on the Chariot, Ms. Cambridge, Dd, 3, 1, fol. 22a. [BACK]

70. Reshit Ḥokhmah, Sha‘ar ha-Kedushah, chap. 2 (Jerusalem, 1984), vol. 2, p. 30, where the text of Gikatilla is quoted. This book was printed in Venice in 1579. [BACK]

71. Shalem. In the Latin definitions, when the sphera is qualified, the terms infinita or intelligibile are used, but not the term perfect; however there are instances where the term sphera is not qualified. [BACK]

72. In Hebrew iggul, literally circle, though in most of the Christian sources the parallel term is sphera, a sphere. The occurrence of the circle in lieu of the sphere may be related to the Neoplatonic definition of the circle as the figure which has all the points of the circumference at an equal distance from the center. This definition is explicitly transferred by Moscato to God; see Nefuẓot Yehudah, p. 79d. [BACK]

73. Ibid., p. 80a. [BACK]

74. See C. Baumkehr, ed., Das pseudo-hermetische Buch der XXIV Philosophorum (Muenster, 1937), p. 208; D. Mahnke, Unendliche Sphaere und Allmittelpunkt (Halle, 1937); Chaim Wirszubski, “Francesco Giorgio’s Commentary on Giovanni Pico’s Kabbalistic Theses,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1974): 154; Georges Poulet, Les Metamorphoses du cercle (Flammarion, 1981), pp. 25–69; Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964), p. 247 and n. 2; Alexander Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (New York, 1958), pp. 18, 279 n. 19, and Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New York, 1967), pp. 227–228; Karsten Harries, “The Infinite Sphere: Comments on the History of a Metaphor,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 13 (1975): 5–15. [BACK]

75. The designation of God as place is a topos in ancient Jewish texts; see Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 66–89; Brian P. Copenhaven, “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and Their Predecessors,” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 489–548; Moshe Idel, “Universalization and Integration: Two Conceptions of Mystical Union in Jewish Mysticism,” in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. M. Idel and B. McGinn (New York, London, 1989), pp. 33–50. [BACK]

76. Nefuẓot Yehudah, p. 79b. See also p. 79c where God is referred to as the absolute space which is, at the same time, the center and the circle. [BACK]

77. On the images of the circle in Renaissance writings see Pines, “Medieval Doctrines,” pp. 338–390; Barzilay, Between Faith and Reason, p. 175; and Moshe Idel, “The Sources of the Circle Images in Dialoghi d’Amore” [Hebrew], Iyyun 28 (1978): 156–166. [BACK]

78. The Hebrew form kevod tiferet is unusual; Perhaps it stands for two sefirot: malkhut as kavod or glory, and tiferet, as a designation of the homonymous sefirah. Such an explanation may reflect the relationship between the two sefirot as circle and center respectively, as we have already seen above, note 66. [BACK]

79. Nefuẓot Yehudah, p. 81b. [BACK]

81. Cf. Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching, p. 226. [BACK]

82. Cf. Couliano, Eros and Magic, p. 12. [BACK]

83. “Some Reflections,” p. 34 (where he also mentions Moscato), and p. 38. [BACK]

84. “Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah,” pp. 261–262. See also Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, pp. 159–160. This conclusion corroborates Isaiah Sonne’s general thesis as to the paramount importance of a strong cultural environment for the development of Jewish Italian culture; see his ha-Yahadut ha-Italkit, Demutah u-Mekomah be-Toledot Am Israel (Jerusalem, 1961); Isadore Twersky, “The Contribution of Italian Sages to Rabbinic Literature,” Italia Judaica (Rome, 1983), pp. 398–399. [BACK]

85. The question of the dissemination of kabbalah in Italy since the late sixteenth century and especially at the beginning of the seventeenth century is still unresolved. See Robert Bonfil, “Halakhah, Kabbalah and Society, Some Insights into Rabbi Menahem Azariah da Fano’s Inner World,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 39–61, especially p. 61, and his “Change in the Cultural Patterns of a Jewish Society in Crisis: Italian Jewry at the Close of the Sixteenth Century,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 18–19, where he speaks of the isolation of the Kabbalists—in my opinion mainly the Lurianic Kabbalists—from the general public. However, the deep impact of the Cordoverian kabbalah in Italy was not overpowered by the later arrival of the Lurianic, especially Sarugian, kabbalistic systems; see Isaiah Tishby, Studies in Kabbalah and Its Branches [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 177–203; see also note 31 above. [BACK]

86. See Moshe Idel, “Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in the Early 17th Century,” Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 137–200, especially pp. 168, 173–174. [BACK]