Samuel David Luzzatto

Authors

Samuel David Luzzatto, also known as Shadal, was an Italian scholar, poet, philosopher, and Biblical commentator. With the help of Rabbi Isaac Samuel Reggio, he was appointed a professor at the rabbinical college of Padua, where he taught Bible, philology, philosophy, and Jewish history until his death. Though religiously observant and a defender of tradition, he applied critical scholarship to his Hebrew commentary of the Torah. He was a prolific writer, contributing to Hebrew and Jewish journals, and corresponding in Hebrew, Italian, French, and German with the major rabbis and scholars of his day. Some of this correspondence was later collected by his son and published as Iggerot Shadal.

Works on Sefaria

Top Citations

Ohev Ger

19th-century academic work of the Shadal analyzing the methods of Targum Onkelos and presenting its textual variants.

Shadal on Tanakh

19th-century commentary by a leading figure in the Jewish enlightenment

Sefer Yesodei HaTorah

19th-century treatise of the Shadal on Jewish belief in light of humanistic ethics and psychology.