Luzzatto, Moses Hayyim

Related Category: Hebrew Literature: Biographies

(hä´yēm lt-tsät´tō), 1707–47, Hebrew playwright, poet, and mystic, a leader of the renaissance of Hebrew literature, b. Padua. At 15 he formed a group to study kabbalistic mysteries (see kabbalah) and at 17 he wrote Samson and Delilah, a drama in verse. He studied the mystic book Zohar closely and claimed divine revelation for his own works of mysticism, most of which did not survive rabbinic denunciation. He wrote of love with biblical lyricism in the Migdal 'Oz (1727). His finest work is the allegorical Glory to the Righteous (1743).