Rabbi Joseph Ergas רבי יוסף אירגס
the Livorno rabbi who wrote the classic philosophical defence of Kabbalah against the charge of corporealising God
Born at Livorno in 1685, rabbi there, and died there in 1730. He learned halakhah from R. Samuel of Fez and Kabbalah from R. Benjamin ha-Kohen Vitale of Reggio — that is, directly in the line of Moses Zacuto.
In 1715 he issued at London Tokhahat Megullah and Ha-Tzad Nahash against the Sabbatean Nehemiah Hayyun — the same campaign Hakham Tzvi and Moses Hagiz were running, and the same machinery that fifteen years later closed on the Ramchal.
Shomer Emunim appeared at Amsterdam in 1736, posthumously. It is a dialogue: Shaltiel accepts only the revealed Torah, Yehoyada defends Kabbalah. Printed with it is Mevo Petahim, a lexicon of Lurianic terms. Its value is that it answers the strongest objection: that the kabbalistic language of sefirot and partzufim ascribes structure and parts to God. His responsa, Divrei Yosef, were published by his disciple R. Malachi ha-Kohen at Livorno in 1742.
Why he matters to the Italian story: read Modena's Ari Nohem (1639) and Ergas's Shomer Emunim (1736) side by side and the whole Italian argument about Kabbalah is visible — a century and more, from denying the Zohar's antiquity to a philosophical defence of its language.
On the timeline
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shomer Emunim, Amsterdam 1736 — the philosophical defence of kabbalistic language against the charge of corporeality
- Tokhahat Megullah and Ha-Tzad Nahash, London 1715 — the polemic against Nehemiah Hayyun — part of the general anti-Sabbatean campaign
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Ergas, Joseph ben Emanuel" — the dates, the teachers and the posthumous printing
Basis: documents and evidence.