Lelio Hillel Della Torre (1805–1871) was an Italian Jewish scholar and poet writing in Italian, German, French and Hebrew, best known for his critical translation of the

Book of Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of ...

(1845, 1854). He was the son of Solomon Jehiel Raphael ha-Kohen, chief rabbi of

Cuneo Cuneo (; ; ; ) is a city and in Piedmont, Italy, the capital of the province of Cuneo, the fourth largest of Italy’s provinces by area. It is located at 550 metres (1,804 ft) in the south-west of Piedmont, at the confluence of the ri ...

Piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...

. His father died in 1807, and Della Torre grew up as an orphan with his mother's family in

Casale Monferrato Casale Monferrato () is a town in the Piedmont region of Northwest Italy, northwestern Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about east of Turin on the right bank of the Po River, Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montfe ...

, and after the death of his maternal grandfather in

Asti Asti ( , ; ; ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) of 74,348 inhabitants (1–1–2021) located in the Italy, Italian region of Piedmont, about east of Turin, in the plain of the Tanaro, Tanaro River. It is the capital of the province of Asti and ...

, with his mother's brother, Sabbatai Elhanan Treves. His uncle moved to

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

in 1820, being named chief rabbi of the Jewish communities of Piemont. Della Torre studied Greek, Latin and Italian in Torino, from the age of sixteen working as a private tutor in order to support his mother and three sisters. From 1823, he was teacher for Hebrew philology and biblical exegesis at the Jewish Collegio Colonna e Finzi in Torino. In 1826 he was ordained as rabbi, acting as rabbi of the Torino community from 1827. In 1829, he was called to

Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

as professor of

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

homiletics In religious studies, homiletics ( ''homilētikós'', from ''homilos'', "assembled crowd, throng") is the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific art of public preaching. One who practices or studies homiletics may be ...

and pastoral theology at the newly established rabbinical seminar there, a position he held until his death. He did not serve as rabbi again except for a brief interval in 1869 following the death of the rabbi of Padua. He was married to Anna Bolaffio, with whom he had seven children.

Bibliography

He also wrote various scholarly articles in Classical Hebrew in the journals ''Kerem Ḥemed'', '' Bikkure ha-'Ittim,'' ,''Oẓar Neḥmad'' and ''Kokebe Yiẓḥaḳ''.

Sources

* Salomon Wininger, ''Große Jüdische National-Biographie'', vol. VI, 122f. *Riccardo Di Segni
Della Torre, Lelio Hillel.
In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): ''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani'' (DBI) vol. 37 (1989).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Della Torre, Lelio 19th-century Italian rabbis Hebrew-language poets 1805 births 1871 deaths People from Cuneo 19th-century Italian poets 19th-century Italian translators Italian male poets 19th-century Italian male writers