Rabbi abraham rovigo’s home as a center for traveling scholars

Abstract

Half a century ago Isaiah Sonne published a list of visitors to the home of the Modenese Rabbi Abraham Rovigo (ca. 1650-1714) over two decades, 1679 to 1699. Rovigo was a leading kabbalist and supporter of Palestine Jews as well as a Sabbatean believer. The present study uses Rovigo’s visitor log to draw out some new information about the shift of Sabbatean centers to Europe; the lowering of boundaries between Jewish ethnic communities (“Pan-Judaism”); and the development of tight Jewish networks in the age of mercantilism. Rovigo was unique in his ability to bring disparate people and networks together, but he adumbrated a model of Jewish leadership that would become more widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.