Luzzato, Moses Chaim

(1707–46)

   Italian cabbalist and poet. Luzzato was born in Padua, Italy. Believing that he had had a visitation from a divine messenger (maggid), Luzzato gathered around him a group of mystics to whom he imparted the maggid’s messianic revelations. Luzzato was accused by the Italian rabbis of dabbling in magic, and promised to stop his teachings. He moved to Amsterdam, where he worked as a diamond polisher. In 1743 he went to Palestine and lived in Acre; there he and his family died in a plague. Later he was revered as a saint by Eastern European Jewry because of his ethical work, Mesillat Yesharim (Eng. trans. The Path of the Upright, 1936). Luzzato’s poems in Hebrew had a great influence on the development of modern Hebrew poetry.