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| An 1847 letter by Shmuel David Luzatto, to the scholar Meir Halevi Letteris. |
Introduction
This article—based extensively on the research by Daniel A. Klein[1]—examines the little-known polemic over Kabbalah between two great Italian rabbis of the nineteenth century. These rabbis were R. Shmuel David Luzzatto (known as Shadal, 1800-1865), a great-grandnephew of the famed R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Ramchal), and R. Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900), the rabbi of Livorno (Leghorn). The two collided in written correspondence—not over Halachah, but over the soul of Judaism itself. Both were outspoken defenders of traditional Judaism, yet each understood its essence in profoundly different ways.
Shadal emphasised the practical, ethical and rational core of Judaism, rejecting mystical elements like Kabbalah and particularly the Zohar. His approach was more material than ethereal in the sense of being grounded in practical, historical, linguistic, and moral realism. Benamozegh, on the other hand, was a mystic, a Kabbalist, a man who believed the Zohar was not only authentic, but essential. To this day, the Piazza Benamozegh in Livorno, Tuscany, continues to bear his name—a quiet but enduring tribute to the legacy of a man whose ideas once stirred fierce debate within Italian Jewry.
