Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

From the frontispiece to his "Sefer Elim."

Joseph Solomon Qandia Delmedigo (also Del Medigo, ישר מקנדיא, Yashar Mi-Qandia or in Italian Jacopo de Candia) (16 June 1591 – 16 October 1655) was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist.[1]

Born in Candia, Crete, he moved to Padua, Italy, studying medicine and taking classes with Galileo in astronomy. After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena and Simone Luzzato. From Venice he went back to Candia and from there started traveling in the near East, reaching Alexandria and Cairo. There he went into a public contest in mathematics against a local mathematician. From Egypt he moved to Istanbul, there he observed the comet of 1619. After Istanbul he wandered along the Karaite communities in Eastern Europe, finally arriving at Amsterdam in 1623. He finally died in Prague. Yet in his lifetime wherever he sojourned he earned his living as a physician and or teacher. His only known works are Elim (Palms), dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays.

As Delmedigo writes in his book, he followed the lectures by Galileo Galilei, during the academic year 1609–1610. In the following years he often refers to Galilei as "rabbi Galileo". Elijah Montalto, physician of Maria de Medici, is also mentioned as one of his teachers.

Works

Sefer Elim

Elim (1629, published by Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam) is written in Hebrew, in response to 12 general and 70 specific religious and scientific questions sent to Delmedigo by a Karaite Jew, Zerach ben Natan from Troki (Lithuania). The format of the book is taken from the number of fountains and palm trees at Elim in the Sinai Peninsula, as given in Numbers, xxxiii, 9: since there are 12 fountains and 70 palm trees at Elim, Delmedigo divided his book into twelve major problems and seventy minor problems. The subjects discussed include astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, and music theory. In the area of music, Delmedigo discusses the physics of music including string resonance, intervals and their proportions, consonance and dissonance. Delmedigo argued that the Jews did not take part in the Scientific Revolution because of Ashkenazi exclusive intellectual interest in the Talmud, whereas the Sepharadim and the Karaites were more interested in natural philosophy and philosophy in general. He called the Jews to reclaim their prominence in philosophy and to incorporate into the non-Jewish surrounding via the exploration of natural sciences.

Some parts of the book were as follows:

Descendants

Some of Delmedigo's descendants settled in Byelorussia and took on the Surname Gorodinsky (after the town of Gorodin). A member of this family, Mordechai Gorodinsky (later hebraized to Nachmani) was one of the founders of the Israeli city of Rehovot.

Notes

  1. ↑ Yashar is an acronym that includes both his two Hebrew initials, Yosef Shlomo and his profession, rofe, i.e. physician. Yashar from Candia (יש"ר מקנדיה) is also a Hebrew pun, since Yashar means straight, as in "the straight [man] from Candia". The drawing (reproduced above to the right) on the frontispiece of his only printed work gives his name simply as "Ioseph Del Medico 'Cretensis'," or "Joseph [of] the Physician, from Crete, Philosopher and Physician." It is hard to determine which of the two, the family name Delmedigo on the one hand or the profession (physician), existed in the first place, giving origin to the other. The Hebrew title page to Sefer Elim gives his occupations specifically as a "complete" rabbi (shalem; this may mean that he had some sort of official smicha), philosopher, physician, and "nobleman" (aluf).

References

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