Machberath Ha’topheth Veha’eden

IMMANUEL BEN SOLOMON OF ROME

Benjamin Harz

Berlin

1922

Prepared, with an introduction and notes by Lazarus Goldschmidt. THE TZVI HIRSCH FERBER COPY, inscribed to his son Eliezer Jacob

studied at the Slobodka yeshivah before universities of Berlin and Strasbourg.

Immanuel’s work here (the final section of his Machberoth), was the first literary text in any language, to pay homage to Dante’s outstanding epic, Divina Comedia. The poet, guided by “Daniel” a friend or teacher, is no doubt a personification of Dante himself. Indeed, Dante and Immanuel of Rome were contemporaries and the weight of recent scholorship suggests that they were on harmonious terms. The editor, Lazarus Goldschmidt, a monumental, though querulous scholar, was adroit in a vast expanse of semitic studies. His monumental achievement was his Talmud translated into German. Following the rise of Nazism, he found refuge in England where he died in 1950. His outstanding library was acquired by the Royal Collection in Copenhagen. He is buried in Anglo-Jewry’s beau monde cemetery at Willesdon