OLIVEYRA, SOLOMON DE:

By: Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., Meyer Kayserling

Ḥakam and author; son of the Portuguese scholar David Israel de Oliveyra of Amsterdam; died May 23, 1708, at Amsterdam. He was preacher at several philanthropic institutions, successor of Moses Raphael de Aguilar as teacher at the Keter Torah in Amsterdam, and member and, after Jacob Sasportas' death in 1698, president of the rabbinical college of the Spanish-Portuguese community of the same city. As early as 1652 Oliveyra published a Portuguese translation of the Canon of Avicenna, which was used by Sousa in his "Vestigios de Lingua Arabica em Portugal" (Lisbon, 1798, 1830); but even as a youth he devoted himself to Hebrew poetry, writing occasional and liturgical poems, generally in imitation of older piyyuṭim. These poems are found in the author's Hebrew riming dictionary "Sharshot Gablut" (Amsterdam, 1665), which was published together with his "Ayyelet Ahabim," a Hebrew text-book on rhetoric with excellent exercises (ib. 1665; Vienna, 1818). For school use he published: "'Eẓ Ḥayyim," a Hebrew-Aramaic-Portuguese lexicon (Amsterdam, 1682); "Zayit Ra'anan," a collection of Talmudic and scientific Hebrew terms with some Hebrew riddles (ib. 1683); "Ilan she-'Anafaw Merubbin," a Portuguese vocabulary, with additions to "'Eẓ Ḥayyim" (ib. 1683); "Yad Lashon" and "Dal Sefatayim," a Hebrew manual and a short Aramaic grammar (ib. 1688); "Darke No'am," a dictionary of rabbinical terms, published with "Darke Adonai" (ib. 1688). Other works by Oliveyra are: "Ṭa'ame ha-Ṭe'amim," on accents, published together with the text of the Pentateuch (ib. 1665; the portion on the Psalms was republished with the text of the Psalter, ib. 1670); "Calendario Fazil y Curioso de las Tablas Lunares" (with the text of the Pentateuch, ib. 1666, 1726; with "Circulo de los Tequphot," ib. 1687); Enseña á Pecadores Que Contiene Diferentes Obras Mediante las Quales Pide al Hombre Piedad á Su Criador" (ib. 1666), a Portuguese translation of part of Isaiah Hurwitz's ascetic work; some occasional speeches in Portuguese. A collection entitled "Peraḥ Shoshan," containing various treatises on the fine arts, grammar and logic, the virtues, thefestivals, etc., as well as several treatises on the calendar, is extant in manuscript.

E. C. M. K.