LUZZATTO, MOSÈ HAJIM. – Jewish poet and Kabbalist, born in Padua in 1707, died in Palestine in 1746. Already as a child he composed Hebrew poems. At a very young age he devoted himself to Kabbalistic studies. Some poems written in a biblical style demonstrate a tendency toward Sabbatianism. Because of his intense mystical life, he became convinced that he held conversations with a celestial being, or maggidh (“narrator,” “announcer”), with Adam, the Patriarchs, Moses, the prophet Elijah, and others. He inserted the “revelations” into his Kabbalistic writings. L. headed a school for the study of the zôhar (v.).
A letter written by one of his pupils, concerning his visions, happened to reach the leader of the struggle against Sabbatianism, Moses Chagis, in Altona; Chagis in turn addressed himself in November 1729 to the rabbinate of Venice so that it might oppose the Luzzattian heresy. L. entered into correspondence with Chagis. Not satisfied with the statements he received, Chagis began to raise the alarm among the Italian rabbis, who responded with considerable calm. Following an excommunication issued by Chagis, L. promised to renounce his Kabbalistic activity. When his commercial ventures failed, he returned to his favorite studies. Excommunicated by the rabbinate of Venice in 1735, he began traveling abroad, meeting with varying receptions; at the age of 40 he went to Palestine for his Kabbalistic studies.
L. is the author of occasional poems, allegorical dramas, 150 psalms that imitate the biblical ones, a Poetics and Rhetoric, a Talmudic Methodology, a treatise on morality (Metallath fêširim, “Path of the Remnants,” with a German translation by J. Wohlgemuth, Berlin 1906 and Frankfurt am Main 1925), and dialogues on philosophical and religious subjects, logic, etc.