Autograph Letter Signed, in Hebrew to I.M. Jost

LUZZATTO, SAMUEL DAVID (SHADA”L)

Padua

2 Teveth, 1840

Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865) was one of the last great representatives of the Italian tradition of Jewish learning that combined eclectic tastes with rigid Orthodoxy. Isaac Marcus Jost (1793-1860) was cut from a different cloth altogether. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Reform movement then sprouting in Germany. The two totally different men met on the common ground of scholarship. The present document is a cover letter, once attached to an unnamed publication of Luzzatto. In passing, Luzzatto mentions that he recently sent a lengthy letter concerning Maimonides to YaSHa”R [Isaac Samuel Reggio]. Luzzatto also confesses to Jost that he wrote negative things concerning Jost to SHI”R [Solomon Judah Rapoport]. See EJ, XI, cols. 604-7; Vol. X, cols. 298-9