JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Abraham Hezekiah was proofreader for the Hebrew press
in Amsterdam. He is mentioned as the proofreader of Benjamin
Raphael Dias Brandon’s Orot ha-Mitzvot (1753) to which
his father wrote an approbation, and to which Abraham contributed
an introduction and poem consisting of 13 stanzas.
Other poems by Abraham were published in works by various
authors: in the Gemul Atalyah (1770) of David *Franco-
Mendes, in the Se’ah Solet (1757) of Raphael b. Gabriel Norzi,
and in the Maskiyyot Kesef (1760) of Mordecai b. Isaac Tamah.
In about 1773 he moved to Hamburg where he succeeded his
father as rabbi of the local Spanish and Portuguese community.
He was the author of a book of eulogies, Sermões Funebres
(Amsterdam, 1753), written in Spanish. It is doubtful that
he is the author of the Yashresh Ya’akov (Nuremberg, 1768), a
work on grammar and the text of the prayer book, as has been
conjectured (see Benjacob, Oẓar, 234 no. 503).
26.
Bibliography: Ghirondi-Neppi, 10 no. 40; Kayserling, Bibl,
[Yehoshua Horowitz]
BASSANI, GIORGIO (1916–2000), Italian writer. Bassani,
who was born in Bologna, lived for many years in Ferrara and
was active in the anti-Fascist Resistance. After World War II
he moved to Rome, but Ferrara, and especially its Jewish community,
remained at the heart of Bassani’s literary world. His
first published work was a volume of stories and poems entitled
Una città di pianura (1940), published under a pseudonym
because of the Fascist antisemitic laws. In 1945 he made his
reputation with a book of poems, Storie di poveri amanti. His
collection of short stories Cinque storie ferraresi (1956) deals
with provincial life in Ferrara. One of them, “Una lapide in
via Mazzini” is the story of a Jewish survivor of a concentration
camp: his presence is an embarrassing reminder to the
people of his native town, who wish to forget the tragedy. Gli
occhiali d’oro (1958; The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, 1960) is the
story of two men rejected by society, one because he is a homosexual,
the other because he is a Jew. The Jewish theme
is omnipresent in Bassani’s fiction: Jewish identity is a paradigm
of the malaise of modern man, who has lost his stable
system of values. This theme is intertwined with the theme
of memory, particularly in Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1962;
The Garden of Finzi Contini, 1965), which has been translated
into a number of languages, including Hebrew. Reality and
fiction are mixed in this novel, which deals with the fate of
an old and wealthy Jewish family during the Fascist years and
the war, and stops just before its deportation. In L’airone (1968;
The Heron, 1969) a Jewish bourgeois who leaves his property
to his Christian wife and the Communist peasants represents
the European bourgeois unable to establish a healthy relationship
with the surrounding world. The association of a problematic
Jewish identity with the crisis of the contemporary
bourgeosie is also a key theme of Dietro la porta (1964; Behind
the Door, 1972), the most autobiographical of his novels. Jewish
characters are also present in L’odore del fieno (1972; The
bassano
Smell of Hay, 1997). In 1980 Bassani revised his short stories
and novels and published them in one volume under the title
Il romanzo di Ferrara. His poems were collected in 1982 in In
rima e senza; among them some texts dealing with the Jewish
condition, such as “Le leggi razziali” (1974). Di là dal cuore
(1984) is a collection all of Bassani’s critical essays. From 1948
to 1961 he edited the literary review Botteghe Oscure and from
1948 to 1961 he was a vice president of Italian radio and television;
for many years he was also president of Italia nostra, an
association for the preservation of the country’s artistic and
natural heritage. In addition he taught the history of theater
at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome.
Bibliography: M. Grillandi, Invito alla lettura di Bassani
(1972); G. Bassani Opere (1998), with a chronology and bibliography;
A. Dolfi, Giorgio Bassani: una scrittura della malinconia (2000); C.
Kroha, “Judaism and Manhood in the Novels of Giorgio Bassani,” in:
T. Di Napoli (ed.), The Italian Jewish Experience (2000); P. Prebys,
Giorgio Bassani, Bibliografia sulle opere e sulla vita (2002).
[Alessandro Guetta (2nd ed.)]
BASSANI, MORDECAI (Marco in Italian; the name Hezekiah
was added on the occasion of his last illness, c. 1632–1703),
Italian rabbi and polemicist. In 1666 he became preacher to
the Ashkenazi community of Verona, and in 1680 he became
its rabbi; in 1695 he was appointed rabbi of the entire Verona
community. He was the author of Sefer Bikkurim (Venice,
1710) containing deathbed prayers and usages (adapted from
Ma’avar Yabbok of *Aaron Berechiah ben Moses of Modena,
and Shenei Luḥot Ha-Berit of Isaiah *Horowitz) written for the
Bikkur Ḥolim fraternity of Verona, but later widely adopted.
His treatise on divorce, entitled Mikhtav le-Ḥizkiyyah, and
one on ḥaliẓah, entitled Ma’amar Mordekhai, were included
by his great-grandson Menahem Navarra in his Penei Yiẓḥak
(Verona, 1743). In his will he mentions a collection of “moral
sermons” which he had compiled (Avnei Binyan, 1 (1938), 65).
He was friendly with the Roman Catholic polemicist Fra Luigi
Maria Benetelli. His criticisms of Benetelli’s polemical work,
Le saette di Gionata… (Venice, 1703) together with those of
Samson *Morpurgo and Abraham Joel *Conegliano prompted
Benetelli’s rejoinder, I dardi rabbinici infranti… (Venice, 1705).
In this work Benetelli speaks in the highest terms of the gentle
manner, great charity, and admirable character of Bassani.
Bassani is also the author of a lengthy responsum on the relationship
between the Ashkenazi community of Verona and
the smaller Sephardi community there.
Bibliography: S. Baron, in: Sefer… S. Krauss (1936), 217–54;
Sonne, in: Zion, 3 (1938), 123ff.; Simonsohn, in: KS, 35 (1959), 127 n. 1;
253 n. 109; C. Roth, Gleanings… (1967), 203, 206–7, 213.
[Cecil Roth]
BASSANO, small town in Veneto (Northern Italy). The first
mention of Jews in Bassano is from a document of October 7,
1264; a certain Aicardo was said to own a vineyard. Only from
the beginning of the 15th century, when Bassano passed over to
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 207