Schirman Haim (1 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. Samuel Romanelli (Shmuel Aaron Romanelli; Aharon)(Sept. 19, 1757 Mantua - Oct. 17, 1814 Casale Monferrato, in the province of Alessandria, in the Piedmont region) was an Italian Jewish poet who wrote in Hebrew. In the late 1780 he traveled to Morocco with a Jewish trader and spent four years there. He describes his Morocco experiences in his book, Masa beArav, published in Berlin in 1791. In the book Romanelli who was a secular son of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskala, is scornful of what he deems primitive customs based on ignorance. But the book provides detailed and colorful descriptions and is written in a wonderful style and so it is no wonder that it became popular. Returning to Europe, he lived in Berlin (c. 1790-1793) where he entered the circle that published the HaMeasef, Der Sammler, and became close with David Friedlander. Friedlander's father in law, Daniel Itzik, supported Romanelli financially. At the 1791 wedding of one of Itzik's daughters Romanelli published a dramatic play, HaKolot Yakhdelun o Mishpat Shalom, in the style of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. In 1793 he was in Vienna where he worked as a proof reader and editor at the Anton Schmidt printing press, and it was there that he published a Hebrew Italian play, Tapukhey Zahav, on Greek mythology. He lived in London (1799), Lille (France), Gibraltar, Amsterdam, The Hague, Genoa, Trieste, Mantua, Torino, Alessandria (Italy), Hannover, Geneva, etc. In 1807 he published in Mantua Zimrat Aritzim, which included Romanelli's Italian translations of poems of praise that rabbis and worthies of the community wrote in honor of Napoleon's Sanhedrin. In 1808 he published in Mantua another Hebrew-Italian play, Makhaze Shadai. He supported himself by teaching and by composing Hebrew and Italian poems for weddings, patriotic feasts, even for royalty. But he kept talking himself out of jobs by showing contempt for rabbis and the wealthy and by not following the rites and traditions of the Jews. This made him unwelcome in town after town and kept him poor. Besides his Hebrew poems, he wrote translations of parts of the prayer-book from Hebrew into Italian and from Italian into Hebrew. Notable among his translations from Italian are those of Metastasio's melodrama "Themistocles" and Maffei's tragedy "Merope"; the latter has been edited by Weikert, a Benedictine monk (Rome, 1903, 2d ed. 1904), while the former is still in manuscript. For the names in the original Romanelli gives Hebrew substitutes, as Merab for Merope, Palti for Polifonte. Top left corner of title page has a very small rubber stamp impression in Hebrew of the former owner, Professor Michael (Milton) Arfa, (1920 New York City - 2003 New York City) the distinguished Rabbi, author and professor of Hebrew literature and philosophy. Dr. Arfa taught generations of students at Yeshiva University, Herzliah Hebrew Teachers Institute, Hunter College, HUC-JIR and NYU. As chairman of the Israel Matz Foundation, Dr. Arfa devoted himself to aiding indigent Hebrew writers, and published scholarly works of Hebrew literature and philosophy. He was a gifted teacher, humanitarian, scholar, lover of Zion and above all a modest and quiet doer of good deeds.