BARUCH BEN GERSHON OF AREZZO:

By: Richard Gottheil

Italian writer; lived in the seventeenth century. He was the author of "Zikkaron li-Bene Yisrael" (Memorial for the Children of Israel), containing a short account (in the Almanzi manuscript, four small folios) of the agitation caused by Shabbethai Ẓebi and his prophet Nathan of Gaza, from the years 5425 to 5436 (1665 to 1676). The account has never been published; it exists in MS. 2226 of the Bodleian collection; MS. 204 of the Almanzi collection (now in the British Museum), and in part in the collection of Baron de Günzburg at St. Petersburg. Baruch was a follower of Shabbethai, and wrote the account with the view of persuading others to join the ranks of the Shabbethaians. According to Grätz, the account is not of much historical value. It must not be confounded with an anti-Shabbethaian account published anonymously in Venice, 1668, and reprinted in Tobiah Cohen's "Ma'aseh Ṭobiah," fols. 27a et seq., Venice, 1707, and bearing the same title.

G.