Rabbi David Nieto רבי דוד נייטו
the haham of London, physician and astronomer, cleared over a sermon on nature
In him met what rarely met in his century: a physician who worked at astronomy and reckoned the calendar—and a teacher of the law who knew what needed defending. From Venice by way of Livorno he came to London, where the Portuguese community had lived fifty years and wanted a voice; from 1701 he was its chacham.
The voice proved loud. In 1704 he said from the pulpit that "nature" is no separate power beside God but God's own working in the world; and part of the community heard in that the Spinoza whom Amsterdam had excommunicated thirty years before. The case went to the rabbis, and Chacham Tzvi judged it: in a responsum he declared Nieto's words correct and praised his learning. There was no ban—there was an accusation and a clearing, and so it should be told.
The Matteh Dan, or Second Kuzari (1714), is written as a conversation in which the Khazar king asks no longer about faith in general but about where the Oral Torah came from; the book argues with the Karaites. The Esh Dat (1715) is against the Sabbateans, whom Nieto held to be a disease rather than a movement.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Matteh Dan, or the Second Kuzari, London 1714 — the defence of the Oral Torah; the argument with the Karaites
- Responsum of the Chacham Tzvi, no. 18 — the charge of Spinozism examined and Nieto cleared
Basis: Talmud and midrash.