[30]
Towards the middle of the sixteenth century we find young Delacrut at
the University of Bologna, the philosopher and Cabbalist, known for his
commentaries to Gikatilla's _Sha'are Orah_ (Cracow, 1600) and Ben
Avigdor's _Mar'eh ha-Ofanim_ (1720), and his translation of Gossuin's
_L'image du monde_ (Amsterdam, 1733). His famous disciple Mordecai Jaffe
(Lebushim) spent ten years in the study of astronomy and mathematics
before he occupied the rabbinate of Grodno (1572)[31] At the request of
Yom-Tob Lipman Heller, Joseph ben Isaac Levi wrote a commentary on
Maimuni's _Moreh Nebukim_, which was published with the former's
annotations, _Gibe'at ha-Moreh_ (Prague, 1611). Deservedly or not,
Eliezer Mann was called "the Hebrew Socrates"; and many a Maskil in his
study of mathematics turned for guidance to Manoah Handel of
Brzeszticzka, Volhynia, author and translator of several scientific
works, who rendered seven Euclidean propositions into Hebrew.[32]
Polyglots they were compelled to be by force of circumstances. When the
exotic Judeo-German finally asserted itself as the vernacular, the
language in which they wrote and prayed was still the ancient Hebrew,
with which every one was familiar, and commercial intercourse with their
Gentile neighbors was hardly feasible without at least a smattering of
the local Slavonic dialect.
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