Mateh Dan-Cuzari Chelek Sheni.

NIETO, DAVID.

Thomas Ilive

London

1714

FIRST EDITION. Hebrew and Spanish text in parallel columns. Title page incorporating portrait-roundel of Judah the Prince flanked by armor-suited angels.

Vinograd, London 24.

Haham of the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue in London, David Nieto (1654-1728) composed the Mateh Dan as a defense of rabbinic Judaism, especially the Oral Law, from the scorn of free-thinking former Marranos who had made London their home. Indeed, outspoken objection against the authority of the rabbinic tradition was a growing problem throughout Sephardic Western Europe. Nieto is noteworthy for his singular response, demanding a new approach toward Jewish thought in order to retrench the stability of tradition. Nieto considered his work as a continuation in the tradition of Judah Halevi’s Cuzari (1506) a philosophical exposition of Judaism, opposing the attacks of Karaites, heretics and other creeds. The trend of ‘adding to’ the Cuzari was continued by R. Isaac Breuer with his 1934 ‘Neue Cuzari’ which addressed Jewish ideologies in vogue at the time. For more on Nieto’s work, see D. Ruderman, Jewish Thought in Newtonian England: The Career and Writings of David Nieto in: Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Vol. 58 (1992) pp. 193-219 and Sh. Rosenberg, Emunat Hakhamim in: Twersky & Septimus (eds.) Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (1997) pp. 285-341.