Jedidiah (Amadio) ben Moses of Recanati

JEDIDIAH (Amadio) BEN MOSES OF RECANATI (or Rimini; 16^th century), scholar and translator. Jedidiah worked as a private tutor in various Italian towns. In 1566 he made a copy (and not a translation, as Neubauer assumes) of Sefer Piskei Halakhot by Moses ibn Danon (Bodleian Library, Ms. Bodl. Or. 620). The other parts of this manuscript may also be Jedidiah's work (see also Bodleian Library, Ms. Mich. 259). He translated Ibn *Tibbon's Hebrew translation of *Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed into Italian, under the title "Erudizione de' confusi" (Parma, De Rossi, cod. Ital. 5, Richler 1259; Berlin, Or. 4°, 487), dedicated to Immanuel (Menahem Azarijah) mi-Fano. Both manuscripts, written between 1581 and 1583, are in Hebrew script; in the introduction, Jedidiah clarifies that he intended to help the Jewish students to understand difficult works and expressions. Excerpts from this translation were published by A. Guetta (see Bibl.). Jedidiah also translated the Book of Judith from the Latin into Hebrew, adding to it a Hebrew poem in which he summarizes the contents (Schoenblum, Catalogue de 135 manuscrits hébreux de la collection Schoenblum (1885), 10; Ms. acquired by Kaufmann but not contained in Weiss's list). Other works by Jedidiah are: Ketavim u-Meliẓot, a collection of letters (Bodleian Library, Ms. Opp. Add. 8°, 38); Turgeman, a Hebrew-Italian glossary of the Bible (Bodleian Library, Ms. Reg. 15, dating from 1597; it is not known whether Ms. 642 of the Guenzburg collection contains the same glossary, or an Italian Bible translation); and an abridgment of Elijah Mizrahi's commentary on Rashi (Parma, De Rossi 288, Richler 669). An Oxford manuscript (Bodleian Library, Ms. Mich. Add. 67) contains a halakhic opinion by Jedidiah, and an opinion rendered by him is quoted by Shabbetai Be'er in Be'er Esek (Venice, 1674). A number of mathematical remarks found in the Schoenblum manuscript, mentioned above, bear Jedidiah's signature and the date 1573.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

G. Sacerdote, in: Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei (1892), 308–25; D. Kaufmann, in: JQR, 11 (1898/99), 662–70; idem, in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 11 (1897–98), 365–68; Kaufmann, Schriften, 2 (1910), 181–3; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 1719, 1735; idem, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Koeniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 1 (1878), 33; idem, in: MGWJ, 43 (1899), 33–34; Steinschneider, Uebersetzungen, 922; Neubauer, Cat, 173, 530, 749, 850; U. Cassuto, Ha-Yehudim be-Firenze bi-Tekufat ha-Renaissance (1967), 182. A. Guetta, in: P.C. Ioly Zorattini (ed.), Percorsi di storia ebraica (2005), 281–303.