Immanuel of Rome עמנואל הרומי
poet and commentator; author of the Machberot Immanuel
He was born in Rome about 1261, into the Tzifroni family; he studied Torah, philosophy and medicine, served the Roman community as scribe and teacher, knew the Italian poets and corresponded with them. The sources give no exact years of his life; the window is set by his writings and by the people he names.
He wrote commentaries on Mishlei, Tehillim, Shir HaShirim and other books of the Tanakh—in the spirit of Ibn Ezra and the Rambam, with philosophical digressions. But he is remembered for the Machberot Immanuel, "Immanuel's Notebooks": twenty-eight chapters of rhymed prose with verse, where jests stand beside love songs, laments, riddles and polemic. He was the first to bring the sonnet into Hebrew poetry—an Italian form the Jews had not had before him. The last notebook, "Hell and Paradise", is a journey through the other world with a guide, written on the model of Dante, whom he apparently knew through common friends.
Because of the freedom of the love poems Rabbi Yosef Karo ruled in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 307:16) that the Machberot may not be read even on weekdays—the only book named there by name. It was printed and read all the same: the first edition is Brescia, 1492. He died about 1328, in exile from Rome, at Fermo.
Places
Sources
Rishonim
- The Machberot Immanuel — the twenty-eight notebooks, the sonnet, "Hell and Paradise"
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 307:16 — the ban on reading the book, named by name
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Rome, the window of years, the edition of 1492, the death at Fermo
Basis: documents and evidence.