BASSANI, ISAIAH:

By: Louis Ginzberg, Vittore Castiglione

Italian rabbi, of the first half of the eighteenth century; the son of Israel Hezekiah Bassani, who was a pupil of Moses Zacuto and of Judah Briel of Mantua. From 1702 to 1707 he was rabbi at Cento, as appears from the documents of the fraternity Shomerim Laboker at Reggio. In 1712 he was at Padua, as is proved by the approbation ("haskamah") he wrote to the "Hon 'Ashir" of Immanuel Ricchi, and he was still living there in 1716 (Lampronti, "Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ," א 34); from Padua he went to Reggio, where he died, some time after 1736. Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto was one of his pupils.

The writings that Isaiah Bassani left prove him to have been a man of immense learning, with a wonderful versatility of mind. Many of his rabbinical decisions are contained in Lampronti's "Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ." One of his poems, written when Zebulon Conegliano passed his examination in medicine at Padua, Aug. 14, 1716, has been published by Abraham Baruch Piperno in his collection of Hebrew poems by Italian-Jewish authors (, 9a). Two of his letters have been published in "Kerem Ḥemed," iii. 163. In the library of the Talmud Torah of Ferrara is preserved the manuscript of an unpublished work by Isaiah Bassani, "Mishpaṭ la-'Ashuḳim" (Judgment for the Oppressed; see Psalm cxlvi. 7).

L. G. V. C.