Ovrim vi-shavim bi-beito shel Rabi Avraham Rovigo

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Offprint from : sfṿnṿt; mḥḳrym ṿmḳṿrṿt ltṿldṿt ḳhylṿt yshrʼl vmzrḥ h (tshkh"ʼ) rʻh-rtsh.


Available online via JStor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23415126.


Abstract: R. Avraham Rovigo's notebook (Sonne Collection, now at the Ben Zvi Institute) contains a list of travellers who had visited Rovigo during the years 1679--94 and 1698--9. The interval (1694--8) is due to the fact that in the interverning years Rovigo's attention was all monopolized by the "maggid" of Mordecai Ashkenazi; during that period he kept special notebooks in which he or Ashkenazi entered whatever seemed important to them. Rovigo used every opportunity to discuss "matters touching this our faith". In the innocence of his heart he discussed these matters also with visitors who were no Sabbatean believers until he was reprimanded by the "maggid". This proves that not all visitors to Rovigo's house can be put down ipso facto as Sabbateans. The list contains forty-two names of visitors, among whom emissaries from Palestine, rabbis from Lithuania and private travellers; it also gives the amounts of money they had received from the community chest and from Rovigo personally. The
notebook thus also enables us to fix the exact dates of the sojourn of the various travellers in Italy. Rovigo was particularly interested in the details of the transmission of Nathan's teachings. When reporting sayings of the Safed emissary Solomon Ayllion who came to Italy in 1688, Rovigo adds that Ayllion had studied together with Elijah Mujajun. According to the notebook both had received the Sabbatean Kabbalah in Salonica from Isaac Ḥanan who had learned it from Nathan. Ayllion, moreover, had also personally known Nathan. Among Rovigo's visitors special mention should be made of R. Joseph of Lithuania (probably of Vilna), who had been a close acquaintance of Heshel Ṣoref. In the 17th century many Jewish physicians would travel from Poland to Italy in order to continue their medical studies in the University of Padua. In the wake of these academic physicians there also travelled doctors of a different kind: healers of the body and the soul, and miracle-workers of the type known as
Ba'al Shem. Many of them seem to have specialized in the treatment of hysterical women and R. Judah of Lithuania was a healer of this type. Other travellers who visited Rovigo's house were emissaries from Poland, sent to collect money for ransoming prisoners. -- JStor.

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