VOLTERRA, AARON ḤAI:

By: Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., Schulim Ochser

Liturgical poet of the first half of the eighteenth century; rabbi of the Italian communities in Massa e Carrara. He was the author of a prayer entitled "Baḳḳashah," or "Elef Shin." The latter name, however, is misleading; for in the entire prayer, in which each word begins with the letter "shin," this letter occurs only 700 times, and not, as this title would indicate, 1,000 times. In his preface the author states that numerous difficulties obliged him to resort to artificial word-formations, in which he felt that the license of poetry justified him. The poem, which begins with the words "Shaddai shoken sheḥaḳim," is accompanied by a commentary containing a glossary of the Talmudic terms occurring in it. A second poem by Volterra, forming an eightfold acrostic of the author's name, commences "'Alekem ishim eḳra," and is written after the style of the poems of Jedaiah b. Abraham Bedersi. These two works were publishedtogether under the title "Baḳḳashah Ḥadashah" (Leghorn, 1740).

E. C. S. O.