1. On this subject, see David B. Ruderman, “The Impact of Science on Jewish Culture and Society in Venice (With Special Reference to Graduates of Padua’s Medical School),” Gli ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV–XVIII, ed. G. Cozzi (Milan, 1987), pp. 417–448, reprinted in David B. Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York, 1992); idem, Science, Medicine, and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe, Spiegel Lecture in European Jewish History (Tel Aviv, 1987); idem, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); idem, “The Language of Science as the Language of Faith: An Aspect of Italian Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Festschrift in Honor of Shlomo Simonsohn, forthcoming. I am presently preparing a book-length study on the place of medicine and the sciences in early modern Jewish culture. For a recent overview of the cultural setting of science in the Christian community, with up-to-date bibligraphical references, see Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (Philadelphia, 1988). [BACK]

2. All of these Hebrew works are discussed in Ruderman, Science, Medicine, and Jewish Culture, and idem, “The Impact of Science.” [BACK]

3. Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven, London, 1989), p. 1, and see his essay in this volume. [BACK]

4. See, for example, Richard S. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven, 1958); Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976); Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform (London, 1975). [BACK]

5. These issues are discussed by Saperstein in the introduction to his anthology (note 3), as well as throughout the essays in this volume. [BACK]

6. This is especially the case for Figo’s contemporary, Judah Moscato. See Moshe Idel’s judgment on his corpus in his essay in this volume. [BACK]

7. A number of Figo’s sermons were published in Samuel Aboab’s Devar Shemuel (Venice, 1702). [BACK]

8. Israel Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati, 1939), pp. 227–272. [BACK]

9. Sefer Binah le-Ittim (Jerusalem, 1989), 2 vols. My citations below are from this volume. It is worth noting that among all the preachers in this volume, Figo was surely the most popular. While the more colorful and prolific Leon Modena published a single volume of sermons that was never reprinted after his death, Figo’s own collection went through some fifty editions, as we have indicated. Such extraordinary popularity as a preacher, particularly among Eastern European Jews, surely requires a historical explanation. Part of the answer is ob- viously related to the elegant simplicity of Figo’s style, the relevance of his ethical messages, and his effective affirmation of traditional Jewish concerns. Part of his effectiveness and popularity might also be due to the language of science he adduces in conveying his message. Surely, the message could have resonated among Eastern European congregations of the nineteenth century as well as among Italian ones in the seventeenth century. [BACK]

10. Bettan, p. 228. [BACK]

11. Abba Apfelbaum, Rabbi Azariah Ficcio [Fichio] (Drohobycz, 1907); Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature (Cincinnati, New York, 1974), vol. 4, pp. 175–177. [BACK]

12. Harry Rabinowicz, “Figo, Azariah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1274. See also his Portraits of Jewish Preachers [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 150–158. [BACK]

13. Isaac Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250–1650 (The Hague, Paris, 1967), pp. 192–209. [BACK]

14. On Modena, see most recently, Mark Cohen, ed. and trans., The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s Life of Judah (Princeton, 1988). [BACK]

15. See Apfelbaum, pp. 87–91. [BACK]

17. On the use of kabbalah among other contemporaries, see Elliott Horo- witz’s essay in this volume. [BACK]

18. On Modena’s attitude to the kabbalah, see Moshe Idel, “Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in the Early 17th Century,” Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 137–200. On the place of kabbalah in Moscato’s sermons, see Idel’s chapter in this volume. [BACK]

19. Azariah Figo, Sefer Giddulei Terumah (Zolkiev, 1809), p. 3b. [BACK]

20. Compare, for example, the introduction to Abraham Portaleone’s Shilte Gibburim (Mantua, 1612), where he similarly acknowledges and renounces his youthful sins in studying the secular sciences. Yet any reader of his book will readily notice that this renunciation was hardly complete! [BACK]

21. Bettan, p. 230. [BACK]

22. Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York, 1971), pp. 373–374. [BACK]

23. Binah le-Ittim, vol. 1, pp. 72–73. On the “telescope” of Rabban Gamaliel and Galileo, see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, p. 98. Figo refers to Babylonian Talmud Eruvin, 43b. [BACK]

24. Binah le-Ittim, p. 73 [BACK]

25. Ibid. On memory systems in the sixteenth century, see Jonathan Spense, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricchi (New York, 1987). [BACK]

26. Binah le-Ittim, p. 73. [BACK]

27. Ibid., pp. 73–74. [BACK]

28. Ibid., p. 75. [BACK]

29. Barzilay, p. 193. [BACK]

30. Binah le-Ittim, p. 81. [BACK]

31. Ibid., pp. 81–82. [BACK]

32. Ibid., p. 82. [BACK]

33. Ibid., pp. 84–87. [BACK]

34. Ibid., p. 87. [BACK]

35. Ibid., I, pp. 90–105. [BACK]

36. Ibid., I, pp. 105–124. [BACK]

37. Ibid., II, pp. 16–23. [BACK]

38. Ibid., II, pp. 388–397. [BACK]

39. On this, see the references in note 1. [BACK]

40. Barzilay, especially pp. 195–202. [BACK]

41. See especially Binah le-Ittim, vol. 1, pp. 267–275. [BACK]

42. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 110–127, especially 110–114. [BACK]

43. Barzilay, p. 197. [BACK]

44. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 85–94. [BACK]

45. Ibid., p. 85. [BACK]

46. Ibid., pp. 85, 88. [BACK]

47. See, for example, Judah Halevi, Sefer Ha-Kuzari, bk. 2, pp. 56, 63–66; bk. 3, p. 53, bk. 4, pp. 24–25. [BACK]

48. Ibid., p. 88. [BACK]

49. The term is Richard Popkin’s as discussed in his The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1979), chap. 7. [BACK]

50. Besides Popkin’s work cited above, see most recently Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, London, 1988), and Lynn Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science (Cambridge, 1987). See Robert Bonfil’s similar conclusions regarding Judah Del Bene in his essay in this volume. [BACK]

51. See Deuteronomy 4:6. [BACK]