Eth Lataath... [lengthy poem composed in honor of the marriage of Yitzchak ben Shabbetai Marini to Judith bath\ Menachem]

BASSAN, ISAIAH

Mantua

(ca. 1690-1700)

Large woodcut device depicting winged angels holding a crown, garlands, trumpets and drum. Text in Hebrew printed in four columns

Writing poetry to commemorate a special event such as a wedding, the birth of a child or a lamentation, was a hobby of Italian rabbis and intellectuals. Isaiah Bassan, Rabbi of Padua, is best remembered as the teacher and defender of Moses Chaim Luzzatto (Ramcha”l) and the author of scholarly responsa (see his Lachmei Todah, Venice, 1741). Bassan was also adept at writing poetry; one of his poems, in honor of a member of a prominent family passing his examination in medicine at Padua, was published together with poetry by Moses Chaim Luzzatto and others by B. Piperno, in Kol Egev, Livorno, 1846. Although Bassan served as a Rabbi in Cento in 1702, Padua in 1712 and later in Reggio, he originally hailed from Mantua, where he studied under R. Moshe Zacuto and R. Judah Briel. This poem was probably written during this earlier period. Bassan writes here he wished he had "wings like a dove to be at this wedding. However as it is taking place a great distance away, he sends his joyous greetings in the form of the present poem."