Solomon Alami was a Portuguese-Jewish ethical writer of the 14th and 15th centuries, contemporary of Simon ben Ẓemaḥ Duran (רשב"ץ). He is known through his ethical treatise ''Iggeret Musar,'' (Why Catastrophes Come) which he addressed, in the form of a letter, to one of his disciples in 1415.

Iggeret Musar

Alami was an eye-witness of the persecutions of the Jews of

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, Castile, and

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in 1391. Alami considers these and other severe trials inflicted upon the

Spanish Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the fe ...

as the effect of, and a punishment for, the moral and religious decadence into which his co-religionists had fallen; and he holds before his brethren a mirror of the moral degeneration extending through all circles of Jewish society. He says in his book: The Hebrew style of the letter is dignified and impassioned, and its moral admonition reveals the noble courage of Alami. Each section of the ''Iggeret Musar'' is preceded by a

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verse suggesting its contents. Zunz published an abridged

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translation of part of it in Busch's ''Jahrbuch für Israeliten,'' iv. (Vienna, 1844), and this also appeared in his ''Gesammelte Schriften,'' ii. 177. An earlier edition appeared in Venice in 1712, as ''Iggeret ha-Ḥokmah weha-Emunah'' (Letter on Wisdom and Faith); but the name of the author was corrupted to Solomon ben Laḥmi. The best edition now extant (c.1906) of Alami's work is that issued by Jellinek (Vienna, 1872). Extracts of the ''Iggeret'' are given in ''Or ha-Ḥayyim'' of Joseph Jaabez and in I.S. Reggio's ''Ha-Torah weha-Philosophia.'' On the name Alami, see

Steinschneider Moritz Steinschneider (; 30 March 1816 – 24 January 1907) was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist, and an important figure in Jewish studies and Jewish history. He is credited as having invented the term ''antisemitism.'' Education Mo ...

, '' Jew. Quart. Rev.'' xi. 486.

References

External links

Jewish Encyclopedia article on Solomon Alami
by Samuel Baeck. {{Authority control 15th-century Portuguese rabbis 14th-century Portuguese rabbis 14th-century Portuguese writers 15th-century Portuguese writers