Ottolenghi, Joseph ben Nathan

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OTTOLENGHI, JOSEPH BEN NATHAN

OTTOLENGHI, JOSEPH BEN NATHAN (d. 1570), rabbi of *Cremona, Italy. As head of the yeshivah, he made Cremona famous as a center of talmudic learning. Between 1558 and 1562 Ottolenghi published about 20 Hebrew works at the celebrated Riva di Trento press. He wrote novellae on the code of Isaac *Alfasi and compiled an index to the Mordekhai (the code of *Mordecai b. Hillel). Some of his contemporaries (among them the historian *Joseph ha-Kohen) considered that the burning of the Talmud and Hebrew legal works in Cremona in 1559, when over 10,000 volumes were destroyed, was the consequence of a dispute between Ottolenghi and a certain Joshua de Cantori, aggravated by the interference of the apostate Vittorio Eliano.

bibliography:

Roth, Italy, 221, 303; Milano, Italia, 265, 620; J. Bloch, Hebrew Printing in Riva di Trento (1933), 3; I. Sonne, Expurgation of Hebrew Booksthe Work of Jewish Scholars (1943), 21–38.

[Giorgio Romano]