Isaac's Fear
Isaac’s Fear is a wide-ranging study of a Hebrew encyclopedia of Judaism by Isaac Lampronti, a rabbi and physician from eighteenth-century Ferrara, in Italy; this is the first encyclopedia of Judaism, with entries on thought and praxis. The book’s eight chapters are previously published studies. Isaac’s Fear represents the attempt to synthesize modern science and religious tradition, a fundamental issue then and in our own day. Encyclopedia entries illuminate the society and culture of early modern Italy, its Jewish community and the intellectual life of the author and his contemporaries.
David Malkiel is Full Professor in the Department of Jewish History of Bar-Ilan University, in Israel. He has published widely on Jewish life in medieval and early modern Europe. On the Jews of Italy, a primary field of interest, he has published four books, most recently Stones Speak (2014), an interdisciplinary study of the Hebrew tombstones of Padua.