Science, Philosophy, and Literature

 

City Walls of Padua

City Walls of Padua. By Zairon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92973343

For the most part, early modern Jews had limited access to the great ferment in science, thought, and letters in European life in this period. As it was for the rest of the European world as well, access was in any case limited to a small elite of men (and a few women). But the barriers were particularly rigid for Jews. Even Jews who had the necessary leisure, linguistic skills, and desire to participate in the path-breaking intellectual achievements of the age faced insurmountable social and institutional barriers. Jews were mostly barred from studying (much less teaching) at universities. (The medical schools at Padua and Perugia were notable exceptions, and by the seventeenth century Jews were also studying medicine at the universities of Leiden and Frankfurt on the Oder.) Many of the important breakthroughs in early modern science and philosophy occurred outside the university at courts of monarchs and aristocrats, and at newly created scientific societies, to which Jews had limited access. But the intellectual circles and scientific societies in which they took place were also mostly closed to Jews.

Moreover, the world of traditional Jewish learning had long been ambivalent about the “alien sciences” – that is, disciplines of learning that were not rooted in Torah study. Medical knowledge and astronomy were somewhat exceptional. Medical knowledge had been valued by Jews at least since the early rabbinic period, and medicine was a prominent occupation of medieval Jews throughout the diaspora. In medieval Spain, Jewish astronomers were highly valued in court circles.

Still, it is very difficult to make generalizations about attitudes toward the natural sciences among early modern Jews. Two scholars who have studied the subject, David Ruderman and Noah Ephron, are in agreement that among the elite who took an interest, three cultural types should be distinguished- 1) converso physicians and intellectuals trained at Spanish and Portuguese universities (not very adventurous places, it should be acknowledged), many of whom left the Iberian Peninsula and brought their scientific learning to Jewish communities elsewhere in Europe; 2) small circles of Jewish scholars in central and eastern Europe (primarily Prague and Cracow) who informally pursued scientific studies, particularly in astronomy; and 3) the hundreds of Jews who attended medical school in this period, primarily at the University of Padua. Those among the first type include Amatus Lusitanus (1511-1642), Elijah Montalto, Abraham Zacut (Zacutus Lusitanus, 1575-1642), and Rodrigo de Castro. Among the central and eastern European Jews who engaged in scientific studies were Moses Isserles (1525-1572) of Cracow, whose astronomical studies were an outgrowth of his Talmudic interests, and David Gans, of Prague, who was acquainted with Tycho Brahe. Among the Jewish graduates of the medical school at the University of Padua were Tobias Cohen, Isaac Lampronti, and Joseph Delmedigo. It is relatively easy to catalog such figures, and thus to demonstrate that science was not ignored by early modern Jews. But much remains to be understood about the nature of the scientific thinking of such men, particularly its relationship to theology.

Historically, speculative philosophy has been much more problematic in Jewish societies. It is true that many educated Jews in the medieval Muslim and Spanish Christian worlds became deeply immersed in Neoplatonic or Aristotelian philosophy, and some of them developed a philosophical framework for original Jewish theological thought. Indeed, philosophy became an integral part of Spanish-Jewish courtier culture. But in the thirteenth century the study of philosophy was sharply challenged by pietists in Spain and Provence, and it continued to be regarded as a threat to Jewish piety by some Jewish leaders up to, and beyond, the Expulsion. Nevertheless, educated Spanish exiles carried philosophical habits with them wherever they settled. One of the exiles was Judah Abarbanel, a university-trained physician and son of the exegete Isaac Abarbanel, who composed a neoplatonic dialogue titled Dialoghi d’amore (Rome 1535) that became well-known in Italian intellectual circles. By this time Jews in Italy, somewhat independently, had absorbed philosophical currents from Italian Renaissance thinkers, with Christian Hebraism supplying one of the conduits. Among the major adepts of philosophy in Italy were Elijah Delmedigo and Johanan Alemanno, both of whom were associated with Pico della Mirandola. In the Ashkenazic world, however, philosophy had little impact on “high” Jewish culture until the Haskalah of the late eighteenth century.

An interest in the vernacular literature of the majority society (particularly poetry) was also an aspect of Sephardi and Italian Jews in the early modern period. Italian Jews appropriated the sonnet, and developed it as a genre of Hebrew verse. The wealthy Sara Coppio Sullam (ca. 1592-1641), among the Italian Jews who wrote sonnets, stands alone as a female member of the early modern Jewish cultural elite. The brothers Jacob and Immanuel Frances turned their considerable talents to polemical use in their poems satirizing the sabbatean movement. Many others of lesser talent wrote occasional poetry, both sacred and profane, and sometimes quite profane. But the impact of European belles lettres was most profoundly felt among the ex-conversos who left the Iberian Peninsula and settled in Jewish communities. The poets and litterateurs of these communities, who wrote primarily in Spanish, drew inspiration from Golden Age Spanish poets like Góngora and Quevedo. Outstanding among them are João Pinto Delgado, Daniel Levi de Barrios, and Solomon Oliveyra. Libraries of ex-conversos contain some of the classics of Golden Age literature, and in Amsterdam, the Portuguese Jews put on theatrical productions of works by Lope de Vega and Calderón.

Secondary Sources

  1. Beecher, Donald. “Leone De’ Sommi and Jewish Theatre in Renaissance Mantua.” Renaissance and Reformation 17, no. 2 (1993)- 5-19.
  2. Ruderman, David B. “Contemporary Science and Jewish Law in the Eyes of Isaac Lampronti of Ferrara and Some of His Contemporaries.” In The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, edited by Barry Walfish, 211-224. Haifa- Haifa University Press, 1992.
  3. Davis, Joseph. “Ashkenazic Rationalism and Midrashic Natural History- Responses to the New Science in the Works of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1578-1654).” Science in Context 10, no. 4 (1997)- 605-626- Abstract- Between 1550 and 1650, the intellectual elite of Ashkenazic Jews, including Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1578-1654) of Bohemia and Poland, showed an interest both in astronomy and in the natural sciences. Heller’s writings show his familiarity with medieval and early modern Hebrew astronomical texts and his belief that astronomy should be studied by all Jewish schoolboys. Heller’s astronomical views were then influenced by the discoveries and debates of his period. Between 1614 and the 1630’s, Heller moved from an Aristotelian to a Tychonic view of the nature of the celestial bodies. Inspired, furthermore, by the notion of a natural order subject to change, and basing himself on the exegesis of ancient rabbinic texts, Heller offered midrashic natural histories, namely, a hypothesis concerning the development of a certain type of animal, and another concerning the dimming of the moon and its movement into a lower orbit.
  4. Efron, Noah J. “Irenism and Natural Philosophy in Rudolfine Prague- The Case of David Gans.” Science in Context 10, no. 4 (1997)- 627-649. Abstract- David Gans (1541-1613), a German Jew who was educated in Poland and spent his adulthood in Prague, produced over his lifetime a large and unprecedented corpus of Hebrew introductions to various liberal disciplines, chiefly astronomy. Gans believed that the disciplines he described might help to mediate between Christians and Jews by serving as a shared subject of study. He considered these subjects to be uniquely apt for shared study because he took them to be theologically neutral. Gans’s hopes went unfulfilled, and most of his books remained unpublished and ignored. Still, his own firm belief in the plausibility of his project implies that it was not a foregone conclusion near the start of the 17th century that astronomy and other liberal disciplines would find no purchase among Central European Jews. It also suggests that the mutual alienation between intellectuals of different confessions that has been emphasized by some historians might have been less pronounced than is often imagined. Further, Gans’s belief that these disciplines could encourage interdenominational discourse and respect, and his intimation that such beliefs were shared by Johann Kepler and Tycho Brahe, suggest the intriguing possibility that natural philosophy was valued by at least some of its early modern practitioners as an irenic undertaking.
  5. Fishman, David E. “Rabbi Moshe Isserles and the Study of Science among Polish Rabbis.” Science in Context 10, no. 4 (1997)- 571-588- Abstract- Discusses differences in the openness to non-Jewish learning among the Ashkenazic and Sephardic rabbinic cultures. The conventional view has been that Sephardic rabbis such as Maimonides were part of a tradition of learning that included philosophy, medicine, and science, whereas Ashkenazic rabbis tended to restrict themselves to Talmudic literature with rare forays into the Bible or Kabbalah. This view has been changed by Ephraim Kupfer, who demonstrated that 15th and 16t- century rabbis in eastern Europe studied rationalist religious philosophy. The article discusses Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1530-72) and his work in astronomy. As a Talmudist and a halakhist, he believed that the study of physics was a prelude to the study of metaphysics. He further argued that knowledge of God’s universe leads to love and reverence for the creator.
  6. Ruderman, David B. “Philosophy, Kabbalah, and Science in the Culture of the Italian Ghetto- On the Debate between Samson Morpurgo and Aviad Sar Shalom Basilae.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 11 (1993)- vii-xxiv.
  7. Tirosh-Rothschild, Hava. “In Defense of Jewish Humanism.” Jewish History 3, no. 2 (1988)- 31-57.
  8. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. “Theology of Nature in Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Philosophy.” Science in Context 10, no. 4 (1997)- 529-570.
  9. Veltri, Giuseppe. “Science and Religious Hermeneutics- The ‘Philosophy’ of Rabbi Loew of Prague.” In Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Jurgen Helm and Annette Winkelmann, 119-135. Leiden- Brill, 2001. Research Notes- Page 121- Text of the epitaph of Rabbi Judah Liva’i’s tombstone in Prague. Pages 122-123- Long excerpt from Meir Perles’ Sefer Megilat Yuhasin Meharal Mi-Prag, a biography of Rabbi Loew, in which Perles talks about Loew’s marriage “to Mrs. Rabbi Loew, since criminal courts had left her rich father with ‘nothing but his bare life’, and only through a miracle did she manage to obtain a dowry and thus marry the respected rabbi” (Published in 1718). Page 130- Excerpt from the sixth chapter of Rabbi Loew’s Be’er Ha-Golah in which he speaks of his excitement upon having received a book written by Azariah de’Rossi, later cursing the day it was published for its supposed opposition to Jewish tradition (Published in 1600). Pages 130-131- Excerpt from the writing of Rabbi Loew in which he defends “himself against a comparison of the rabbinic authorities with the new scholarly disciplines” (No information as to origin or date of publication given).

    Images

    1. Almanac Perpetuum, Abraham Zacuto, (Leiria-) Samuel Dortas, 1496, Z-14, Fols. 67v-68r.

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