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Umberto Cassuto – Intellectual Profile

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Umberto Cassuto

Name	Umberto Cassuto משה דוד קאסוטו
Dates	1883-1951
Location	Italy / Israel
Works	Commentaries on Bereshit and Shemot, Volumes on Ancient Near East and vs. Documentary Hypothesis, Editor of Encyclopedia Mikrait
Exegetical Characteristics
Influenced by
Impacted on

Background¹

Life

• Name
  • Hebrew name – משה דוד קאסוטו
  • Italian name – Umberto Cassuto
• Dates – 1883-1951
• Location – Florence, Rome, Jerusalem
• Education
  • Cassuto was raised in a religious Jewish home, receiving a traditional Jewish education while also attending public elementary and secondary schools.
  • He entered the local rabbinical seminary² in 1899, receiving ordination in 1908.
  • Concurrent with his rabbinical studies, Cassuto attended the University of Florence, receiving a doctorate in literature in 1906, and completing his post-doctoral studies in Semitic languages in 1908.
• Occupation and communal position
  • While still studying for ordination, Cassuto began teaching the younger students at the rabbinical seminary, and later served as rabbi of a synagogue in Florence and as assistant to the chief rabbi of Florence.³
  • He was a prominent figure within the early 20th century cultural revival of the Florentine Jewish community,⁴ considered the foremost member of the circle of intellectuals involved in Jewish studies.⁵
  • Cassuto had significant influence over Jewish education in Italy during this period, viewing the establishment of Jewish schools as essential in preventing assimilation.⁶
  • At the age of 29, he was appointed instructor of Bible and Jewish history at the rabbinical seminary in Florence, and two years later began lecturing in Hebrew language at the University of Florence.
  • In 1922, he was appointed director of the rabbinical seminary and assumed the position of chief rabbi of Florence, resigning from the latter post in 1925 upon becoming a full professor at the University of Florence. He left Florence in 1933 to take up a position at the University of Rome,⁷ where he taught until his dismissal under Italy's Racial Laws in 1938.
  • In 1939, Cassuto moved to Jerusalem and was appointed a professor of Bible at Hebrew University, where he taught until his death.
• Family
  • His parents were Amminadav Shabtai (Gustavo)⁸ and Esther (Ernesta).
  • Married Bice (שמחה) and they had four children: Malka,⁹ Natan, Leah, and Chuldah.
  • Natan and Chuldah's husband perished in the Holocaust, while the rest of the family escaped to Israel. Cassuto was actively involved in the rearing of his orphaned grandchildren, especially after Natan's widow was murdered in the 1948 Mount Scopus convoy massacre.
• Teachers – R. Samuel Hirsch Margulies,¹⁰ Dr. Ismar Elbogen,¹¹ R. Tzvi Peretz Chajes¹²
• Colleagues – Yechezkel Kaufmann, Martin Buber
• Students –
• Time Period – The latter part of Cassuto's life was drastically affected by the rise of fascism and the Holocaust.¹³ He moved to Palestine under the British Mandate, and lived to see the early years of the State of Israel.¹⁴

Works¹⁵

Cassuto's early scholarship focused on the history of Italian Jewry. He later concentrated more on Biblical studies, literature of the Ancient Near East (especially Ugaritic literature), and related fields. His prolific output of hundreds of articles and books includes studies in the fields of biblical Targumim, epigraphy, Hebrew bibliography and paleography, and the Italian-Jewish dialect.¹⁶

• Biblical commentaries
  • פירוש על ספר בראשית – An extensive commentary on Bereshit 1-13.¹⁷
  • פירוש על ספר שמות – A commentary on the entire book of Shemot, considerably more concise in style than the commentary to Bereshit.¹⁸
  • תורת התעודות וסידורם של ספרי התורה – A concise summary of his critique of the Documentary Hypothesis, as expressed in a series of eight lectures given to teachers in 1940.¹⁹
  • ספר בראשית ומבנהו – A Hebrew translation of his seminal Italian work: La questione della Genesi.²⁰
  • ספרות מקראית וספרות כנענית – Two volume collection of articles.²¹
• Other works
  • האלה ענת – A study of Ugaritic texts and their comparison with Tanakh.²²
  • אנציקלופדיה מקראית – Cassuto served as founding Editor in Chief and wrote numerous entries for the Encyclopaedia Biblica. Throughout his career, he also made major contributions to various other encyclopedias.²³
  • Gli ebrei a Firenze nell'eta del Rinascimento [The Jews of Florence in the Age of the Renaissance] – a seminal work of Italian Jewish history.²⁴
  • Storia della letteratura ebraica postbiblical [History of Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature].²⁵
• Misattributed work – The Hebrew Bible popularly known in Israel as "תנ"ך קאסוטו" is actually the work of R. Elia Samuele Artom, Cassuto's brother-in-law.²⁶

Torah Commentary

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¹ This page is partially based on M. Artom, "הרב פרופ' משה דוד קאסוטו ז"ל", in Eretz Yisrael 3 (1954): 1-2 (hereafter: Artom, Cassuto). Menahem Artom was Cassuto's nephew.

² Collegio Rabbinico Italiano of Florence.

³ R. Samuel Hirsch Margulies.

⁴ Cassuto also served on and off as the secretary of the Florence Jewish community.

⁵ See C. Bettin, Italian Jews from Emancipation to the Racial Laws (2010): 35.

⁶ In 1911, he was elected by a youth congress to conduct, with two colleagues, a study assessing the Italian Jewish schools, and in 1920 he published an article (in Giovane Israele) arguing for the establishment of non-denominational Jewish schools that would admit even gentiles. He further advocated the publication of new Hebrew grammar textbooks and a Hebrew-Italian dictionary. See Bettin, Italian Jews: 36-38.

⁷ Professor of Hebrew and comparative Semitics.

⁸ A print shop owner.

⁹ A scholar of ancient literature and a senior librarian, she edited and proofread most of her father's writings.

¹⁰ Head of the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano of Florence and Chief Rabbi of Florence.

¹¹ Lecturer on Biblical exegesis and Jewish history at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano in Florence (and later in Berlin), and known for his scholarship on Jewish liturgy.

¹² A professor at the Collegio Rabbinico who had a profound influence on the young Cassuto in the three areas of scholarship he would later focus on: Bible studies, Jewish literature, and Jewish history. According to Artom (Cassuto: 1), from among Cassuto's teachers at the seminary, R. Chajes had the greatest impact on him.

¹³ See above, Occupation and Family.

¹⁴ His Zionism was linked to his Bible studies: he believed that the Jewish people needed to forge a method of Bible study that would be true to the spirit of the national revival in Israel. See A. Rofe, "קאסוטו חוקר המקרא: תכניתו משנת ת"ש במבט משנת תשס"ב", Beit Mikra 47:4 (2002): 290-291.

¹⁵ Cassuto was an extremely prolific scholar, and it is impossible to list here all of his works. Below is a selection of book-length works available in Hebrew or English, with occasional reference to significant Italian works yet to be translated. For a relatively complete bibliography of Cassuto's publications up to the year 1954, see M. Cassuto-Salzmann, "כתבי משה דוד קאסוטו ז"ל: רשימה ביבליוגראפית" in Eretz Yisrael 3 (1954): 3-14, 266.

¹⁶ During his time in Jerusalem, Cassuto began work on publication of a Hebrew Bible based on his research of ancient texts and variants. For this project, he famously visited Aleppo after receiving special permission to view the Aleppo Codex, much of which would be lost a few years later. He completed preliminary work on this edition, but died before completing the project. Much of what is known about the missing portions of the Codex comes from Cassuto's notes. See Y. Ofer, "כתר ארם צובה – לאור רשימותיו של מ"ד קאסוטו", Sefunot N.S. 4 (1989): 277-344.

¹⁷ Originally published in 2 volumes, Jerusalem, 1944-49. Later published in English translation: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 2 vols., Jerusalem, 1961-64. The commentary is divided into two main parts: Part I: From Adam to Noah, Part II: From Noah to Abraham; the book incorporates a work that was never completed: "אברהם והארץ יעודה", and only covers through chapter 13.

The work is based on Cassuto's Italian work La questione della Genesi (see below), but also includes material based on Cassuto's later research, notably his work on Ugaritic and other Near Eastern literature. [See A. Rofe, "קאסוטו חוקר המקרא: תכניתו משנת ת"ש במבט משנת תשס"ב", Beit Mikra 47 (4) (2002): 294-297, for a discussion of Cassuto's use of the archaeology and literature of the ancient Near East, and especially how at first he used the Bible to shed light on ancient inscriptions, and only later began using epigraphic studies to illuminate the Bible.]

Cassuto's writings on Bereshit comprise a major critique of the Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis, which had already been accepted as conventional wisdom. The commentary further represents a new approach that, while critical and scientific, views the Pentateuch as an organic whole produced by one author (although the text, according to Cassuto, was influenced by and partially based on several earlier epic poems). Cassuto's method was therefore to interpret the meaning of the received text as a fine work of literature, and not to view it as a disjointed amalgam of earlier documents.

For a significant critique of Cassuto's approach, see the review article by Y. Kaufmann, ‏"המאמר: 'מאדם עד נח'"‏ in מכבשונה של היצירה המקראית (Tel Aviv, 1966). Kaufmann notes that while Cassuto's view of the Bible would be considered conservative by conventional Bible critics, it would be considered radical from the perspective of traditional approaches to the Bible. For a broader discussion of Cassuto's approach to Bible study, see M. Yitzhaki, "הגישה הרצויה והמצויה לחקר המקרא – בעיניו של מ"ד קאסוטו ז"ל", Beit Mikra 15:3 (1970): 327-338.

¹⁸ Jerusalem, 1952. Later published in English translation as: A Commentary on the book of Exodus, Jerusalem, 1967. For a review, see A. Cohen, "פירוש על ספר שמות", Tarbiz 23:2 (1952): 132-136.

¹⁹ Jerusalem, 1941. Later published in English translation as: The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch: Eight Lectures by U. Cassuto, Jerusalem 1961 (and republished by Shalem Press in 2006 with an instructive introduction by J. Berman).

²⁰ The Italian original was published in Florence, 1934, while the Hebrew translation was published in Jerusalem, 1990.

²¹ Published in Jerusalem, 1972-1979. Also published in English translation as: Biblical and Oriental Studies (2 vols.), 1976. A notable feature of some of these articles is Cassuto's use of traditions preserved in post-biblical Jewish literature (including Talmudic and Midrashic literature) to understand the literal meaning of the Biblical text. See the discussion in Rofe, קאסוטו חוקר מקרא: 297-304.

²² Jerusalem, 1951. Later published in English translation as: The Goddess Anath: Canaanite Epics on the Patriarchal Age.

²³ Cassuto wrote nearly all the entries relating to post-biblical Judaism for the general Italian encyclopedia, Enciclopedia Italiana. He wrote also for the German Encyclopedia Judaica, and אנציקלופדיה העברית.

²⁴ Florence, 1918. Later published in English translation as: היהודים בפירינצי בתקופת הרניסאנס, Jerusalem (1967).

²⁵ Florence, 1938.

²⁶ This was one of the most popular 20th century editions of the Bible in Israel, used widely in the Israeli school system and by the general public. The edition included a popular commentary based on modern scholarship, and became known as Cassuto's Tanakh due to a marketing ploy claiming it followed the "Cassuto method", despite the lack of any involvement on the part of Cassuto.