Registri ebraici 1770-1899: The Jews of Mantua - Births, Deaths, Marriages

[onthemainline]

Karen, I hope you're still reading this thread. I actually have been doing a little bit of research into Cologna recently.

As for Zelman, he was a prized pupil of Samuel David Luzzatto (he is frequently quoted by name in Luzzatto's Bible commentaries). He even lived with his mentor for a couple of years in Trieste.

Below is a poem which Zelman wrote in honor of Cologna's moving to Trieste; it was published in the 11th volume of Bikkurei ha-ittim, 1830:

If you have any questions, you can email me dbmin9NOSPAM@aol.com (remove NOSPAM)

[GreggZelmanTree]

Hi Justin (and Onthemainline and anyone else interested...)

Last week I managed to photograph some of the pages of microfilm.  As I don't read Hebrew, I thought you might like to have a go at this first page and translate what it says. 

I've plenty more pages of entries of Hebrew mixed with Italian.  I think I took around 80 photographs.  I'll pick out a couple and post them here too.

Cheers
Kate

[JustinL]

Kate,

This exercise will be even more difficult than I had anticipated.

The Hebrew letters are written in an old Sephardic script. Being used to deciphering Ashkenazi script, I am really struggling to recognise some of the letters. Furthermore, the language may be Ladino, which was the Sephardic equivalent of Yiddish, i.e. old Spanish rendered in Hebrew letters.

The first line reads:

Visoriah bat (daughter of) Mordechai Menoretsi ? Zimzon ben (son of)

The first name make be simply Soriah, but there appears to be a preceeding syllable (vav-yud).

The second line goes:

Eneyl (sic) Pintsi

I am usure whether the first letter of that first word is aleph (a) or hey (h).

The group of letters to the left of 1667 is the year in Hebrew = 427. The full year is 5427, but the 5000 is usually omitted.

On the next line the word is mishpakhat meaning family.

Justin

[GreggZelmanTree]

Hi Justin

Please don't worry about the first document.  It was right at the beginning of the microfilm and I thought it might be a summary of the documents...which it appears not to be.  I am amazed to learn the writing is Sephardic.  I thought the top half of Italy was typically Askenazim.

The second item is an example of the birth/marriage/death entries written in the mixture of Hebrew and Italian.  I expect then, that this is also Sephardic Hebrew?

Let me know if you want to more examples to play with.

Cheers
Kate

[JustinL]

Hello Kate,

It may not be purely Sephardic script, but certainly many of the letters are written in a fashion that I have not seen in my documents from Germany.

The second photo for Isaaco Cologna is not easy either. I can see the word yom meaning day several times. In most cases the tail of the final mem (m) goes up, whereas in Ashkenazi writing it goes down. Unfortunately, the long tails of the Italian letters partially obscure some of the Hebrew text below.

Just above the horizontal line, I can see the name Baruch.

Post some more, practice might make perfect.

Justin

[GreggZelmanTree]

Hi Justin

Thanks for having a go at these. 

Here's another two.  One is a FINZI and the other is a NORSA. 

Don't spend too much time on this.  It might be for the next generation to ponder. 

Cheers
Kate

[onthemainline]

Kate,

Just a couple of corrections to Justin's work; I can see why some of the letters were mixed up. The first line read Nitoria bat Mordechai mi-Norzi eshet Shimshon ben Enielle [sic] Finzi. This means Notoria, daughter of Mordecai from Norzi, wife of Samson, son of Enielle (?) [sic] Finzi. Then follows the Hebrew year [4]426, equivalent to 1667.

Norzi probably being derived from the Italian town Norcia. The surname Norzi is a famous Italian Jewish one.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=344&letter=N

Italian is not my strong point, so I'll move on to the Hebrew.

Be-mekom Enielle yesh Aviad Yisrael, which literally means "in place of Enielle there is Aviad Israel," presumably meaning that this Enielle was also known by the Hebrew names Aviad Israel. Then follows the Hebrew year [4]430, this time without the Christian equivalent, 1670.

The Hebrew toward the end reads tashmishei kedusha which means "sacred objects" or "vocation." Here I'm assuming it's a reference to a tombstone inscription, and at the end it reads shema ha-tze'irah Vittoria . . . eshet km"r Aminadav mi-Pano "here likes the youthful Vittoria . . . wife of his honor, rabbi Aminadav of Pano" (also a famous Italian Jewish family name, as nearly all Italian Jewish surnames seem to be!). Below is the date [4]424/ 1624.

As for the style of writing, it is the Sephardic cursive known colloquially as Rashi or Rabbinic script. Italians used this script as well. Ashkenazim used it almost exclusively in printing, although the Ashkenazic cursive script is ultimately derived from this script (or at least it's ancestor).

I actually posted about this script a couple of times

http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2009/04/rashi-script.html
http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-are-rashi-letters-called-rashi.html
http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2008/06/im-no-hebrew-paleographer.html

You can also see some nice examples of this script here

http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2009/02/valmadonna-photos-and-comments.html

and here

http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2008/07/hebrew-by-hand-of-17th-century.html

at this link http://tinyurl.com/yfs52m3

there are a number of notebooks of 19th century Italian scholar Isaac Samuel Reggio, and they're all written in that script.

The second one, with Cologna, I can only make out a word here or there, so I'm not much help, although there are date, like the month of Kislev (December) 1771 .

[JustinL]

Well done. onthemainline.

I'm glad I was at least right about the non-Ashkenazi script. I was wondering, if it could be classified as Rashi script.

I would have thought that if Aviad Yisrael was an alias for Enielle then the word 'hamechune' or 'demitkari' would have been used to link them. Is it possible that Aviad Yisrael was Vittoria's step or adoptive father?

Can you make it any of the Norsa and Finzi snippets. Can I see Yosef Baruch ha-Levi on the Norsa one?

Justin

[onthemainline]

Thanks Justin.

By the way, I found it interesting that "(sic)" is written in this . . . registry(?). It seems that the 19th century writer was as confused by "Enielle" as we were. In fact, I just took a stab at how it should be written in Latin letters, going by the Hebrew of course. "Vittoria" seems obvious, but Enielle less so, at least to me, not being familiar with that name.

As for the script, strictly speaking it probably shouldn't be called Rashi script, since that really applies only to types or fonts. In fact, strictly speaking Rashi script shouldn't be called Rashi script. However, the Hebrew semi-cursive used by Italian Jews is descended from the same semi-cursive which produced the font style, as well as the various Sephardic versions of this script and they look quite similar. the JNUL web site has many digitized books and manuscripts which you can browse and compare the scripts. Less well known, I think, is that the Ashkenazic semi-cursive (which is the most widely used in Israel and even among Sephardim today) is also descended from this medieval semi-cursive, as a careful comparison of the letters shows.

The Norzi and Finzi snippets; first thing which is interesting is that they're written in the Ashkenazic script. I can make out some individual names and words, but I need to give it more attention to see if I can get the whole thing. You read Yosef Baruch ha-Levi correctly. It seems to be some kind of record of financial obligation and support.