Ganso, Joseph

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GANSO, JOSEPH

GANSO, JOSEPH (17th century), rabbi, author, and paytan. He lived in Bursa, Turkey, and, in his old age, immigrated to Jerusalem, where he died. Famed as a leading hymnologist he composed a book of piyyutim of which only one incomplete copy is extant (in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York). The hymns, written in a lucid style, reveal the influence of R. Israel *Najara, but they are also original in a manner typical of his contemporaries and of his time. Several of the hymns are in Aramaic. The most important of Ganso's pupils was R. Solomon *Algazi.

bibliography:

Conforte, Kore, 50a, 51a; Ghirondi-Neppi, 197; Rosanes, Togarmah, 3 (1914), 160; Davidson, Oẓar, 4 (1933), 493–4.

[Abraham Meir Habermann]