Salomon De Oliveyra Ben-David
Salomon De Oliveyra Ben-David [1]
a distinguished Hebrew poet. and grammarian, and chief rabbi of the Portuguese Jews at Amsterdam, was born about 1640. He was a master in Hebrew, and wrote synagogical poetry when very young. He first succeeded Moses Raphael de Aguilar as teacher in the Kether Thora ( כתר תורה ), and was elected in 1674 to the dignity Of Chacham In the institution called Geniluth Chassadim, where he delivered exsositions on the Pentateuch between 1674 and 1678, and on the historic and poetic books between 1678 and 1682. In 1693 he succeeded Aboab as president of the Rabbinic college, and died in May, 1708. He wrote, אִיֶּלֶת אֲהָבַים , The Lovely Hind, a moral philosophical work on Hebrew rhetoric (Amsterdam, 1665): — דִּל שְׂפָתִיַם , The Door Of Lips, a Chaldee grammar, with the title Grammatica da lengoa Chaldaica" (ibid. 1682): — נֹעִםדִּרְכֵּי , a methodology and logic of the Talmud (ibid. 1688): — דִּרְכֵּי יי an alphabetical index to the 613 Precepts, etc. (ibid. 1689): — זִית רִעְנָן , The Green Olive, a Portuguese translation of the words which frequently occur in the Mishna and Gemara, and of the technical expressions (ibid. 1683): — טוּב טִעִם וָדִעִת , on the Hebrew accents, printed together with No. 3 (ibid. 1688): — יִד לָשׁוֹן , on Hebrew and Chaldee grammar, to which is appended כָּתוּב אֲרָמַית , on the Biblical Aramaisms (ibid. 1682,1689): — עֵוֹ חִיַּים , a Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Portuguese lexicon (ibid. 1682): — שִׁרְשׁוֹת גִּבְלֻת , Chain Of Terminations, a lexicon on Hebrew assonance (ibid. 1665): — טִעֲמֵי הִטְּעָמַים , The Reasons For The Accents, a treatise on Hebrew accents, in which he discourses especially on the poetical accents of Job, Proverbs, and the Psalms, published with the Pentateuch and Haphtaroth (ibid. 1665, and often). He also wrote a Calendar an astronomical work, etc. — See Frankel, Monatsschrift Fur Gesch. U. Wissensch. D. Judenthuns (Breslau, 1861), 10:432-436; Steinschneider, Catalogus Librorum In Biblioth. Bodleiana, col. 2379-83; the same, Bibliogr. Handbuch (Berlin, 1859), No. 1471-78; Kitto, Cyclop. s.v.; First, Bibl. Jud. 3:46, etc.; Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. i iii, iv, n. 1955; De Rossi, Dizionario storico degli autori Ebrei, p. 251 (Germ. transl. by Hamberger); Lindo, History of the Jews of Spain and Portugal (Lond. 1848),. p. 368; Finn, Sephardim, or the History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal (ibid. 1841), p. 464; Jost, Gesch. d. Judenth. u. s. Sekten, 3:179, 234; Kayserling, Sepharidinm (Leips. 1859), p. 206, 261, 315; the same, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal (ibid. 1867), p. 310; the same, Bibliothek Jiidischer Kanzebledner (Berlin, 1870), vol. i; Beiblatt, p. 10. (B. P.)
