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Rabbi Shemuel David Luzzatto
Edited by Shelomo Alfassa
Image Magazine February 2006
Rabbi Shemuel David Luzzatto (ShaDaL) was an Italian Torá commentator, poet and scholar. He was born at Triest, a city located in the northeast border of (modern) Italy and Slovenia, August 22, 1800.
He was the great-great grandson of the famous Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto known for his masterly ethical work, Mesillat Yesharim, probably the most popular mussar (ethics) work in Jewish literature today.
While still a boy he entered the Talmud-Torá of his native city, where besides Talmud, in which he was taught by Abraham Eliezer ha-Levi, Chief Rabbi of Triest and a distinguished Talmudist. Later Luzzatto studied ancient and modern languages as well as science. At home he studied Hebrew with his father, who although was a lathe operator (a turner) and tradesman, was an eminent Talmudist. As a matter of fact, the Luzzatto family is very famous in Jewish history with nine members all being notables.
The young Shemuel Luzzatto manifested extraordinary ability from his very childhood. While reading the Book of Job at school, he decided to write a commentary on the book, considering the existing commentaries to be deficient. At the age of thirteen Luzzatto was withdrawn from school, attending only the lectures in Talmud.
In 1814 there began a most trying time for Luzzatto. His mother dying in that year, he had to do the housework, including cooking, and to help his father in his workshop. Nevertheless, by the end of 1815 he had composed thirty-seven poems, which form a part of his Kinnor Na'im, among many other books.
In spite of his father's desire that he should learn a trade, Luzzatto had no inclination for one, and in order to earn his livelihood he was obliged to give private lessons, finding pupils with great difficulty on account of his shyness. From 1824, in which year his father died, he had to depend entirely upon himself. Until 1829 he earned a livelihood by giving Torá lessons and by writing for the Bikkure ha-'Ittim (First Fruits of the Times) a yearly publication from Vienna intended for young people; that same year he was appointed professor at the rabbinical college of Padua, a city in northeast Italy.
Luzzatto was a warm defender of Biblical and Talmudical Judaism; and his opposition to philosophical Judaism brought him many opponents among his contemporaries. But his opposition to philosophy was not the result of fanaticism nor of lack of understanding. He claimed to have read during twenty-four years all the ancient philosophers, and that the more he read them the more he found them deviating from the truth.
He became the first Jewish scholar to turn his attention to the Syriac language, considering a knowledge of this language necessary for the understanding of the Targum, the Aramaic explanatory translations or paraphrasings of the Tanakh.
Rabbi Luzzatto had several children. Filosseno Luzzatto (1829-1854) showed from childhood remarkable linguistic aptitude, and having mastered several European languages, he devoted himself to the study of Semitic languages and Sanskrit. When a boy of thirteen he deciphered some old inscriptions on the tombstones of Padua which had puzzled older scholars. He translated into Italian eighteen chapters of Yeheskel, adding to the same a Hebrew commentary. Luzzatto contributed many books to the world as well as wrote in many periodicals. Of special interest are his observations on the inscriptions in the ruins of the ancient Jewish cemetery in Paris. Isaia Luzzatto (1836-1898) was for some time attorney for one of the principal Jewish families of the community. His life was saddened by illness and other troubles. Besides a small work, written in his youth, on the battle of Legnano, he wrote various books to serve as a guide for the publication of his father's writings. Shemuel Luzzatto's last son, Beniamino (1850-1893), became a very high ranking physician in Padua, writing scientific studies on the heart and other organs.
During his literary career of more than fifty years, Rabbi Shemuel David Luzzatto wrote a great number of works, both in Hebrew and in Italian. Besides he contributed to most of the Hebrew and Jewish periodicals of his time. His correspondence with his contemporaries is both voluminous and instructive; there being hardly any subject in connection with Judaism on which he did not write. Rabbi Luzzatto died at Padua on Sept. 30, 1865.