Isaiah Sonne, sometimes also Isaia Sonne, (1887–1960) was a Jewish historian and bibliographer. Born in Galicia in 1887, he was educated in Switzerland and Italy, spending much of his career in the latter country as a teacher at Jewish colleges. After the implementations of the Italian Racial Laws in 1938, Sonne migrated to the United States where he taught at the

Hebrew Union College Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, where he died in 1960. Sonne made considerable contributions to the ''

Wissenschaft des Judentums "''Wissenschaft des Judentums''" (Literally in German the expression means "Science of Judaism"; more recently in the US it started to be rendered as "Jewish Studies" or "Judaic Studies," a wide academic field of inquiry in American Universities) ...

''.

Biography

Sonne was born in Mościska, Galicia, then part of the

Austrian-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1 ...

, on 26 February 1887 and was educated in Switzerland and Italy, receiving a Rabbinical degree there in 1925. He taught, for a short time, at

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

but moved to

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, Italy in 1925 to teach

Rabbinical literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic writ ...

and the

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

at the Rabbinic College there, the ''Collegio Rabbinico''. Apart from teaching he also engaged in research into the Jewish history in Italy. In the mid-1930s Sonne became the first to compile a partial catalogue of the ''

Biblioteca della Comunità Israelitica The Biblioteca della Comunità Israelitica was the library of the Jewish community of Rome, Italy. Established in the early 20th century, it housed approximately 7,000 rare or unique books and manuscripts dating back to at least the 16th century. A ...

'', looted by the Nazis in October 1943 and never recovered. Sonne, however, complained that he was allowed to see only the second-best items in the library. From 1936 to 1938 he taught on the island of

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...

, then part of the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

, as the director of the Jewish Theological Seminar there, a post subsidised by the Italian government with the aim of spreading Italian culture. Sonne's aim, while on Rhodes, was to bridge the gap of knowledge between Eastern and Western Jews and, in the words of

Salo Wittmayer Baron Salo Wittmayer Baron (May 26, 1895 – November 25, 1989) was a Polish-born American historian, described as "the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century". Baron taught at Columbia University from 1930 until his retirement in 1963. Life ...

, "infuse the Levantine Jewry with the ''

''". After the implementation of the Anti-Semitic Italian Racial Laws in 1938 Sonne lost his post and emigrated to the United States by 1940. He became a professor of the

, where he died on 27 November 1960.

Publications

Sonne published in four languages, English, German, Italian and Hebrew, on a wide range of subjects stretching from biography to rabbinics and philosophy, with his contribution to the ''Wissenschaft des Judentums'' on the subject of

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

history the most noted. Selected works: * ''Spinoza und die juedische Philosophie des Mittelalters'' (in German, 1925) * ''Expurgation of Hebrew books--the work of Jewish scholars : a contribution to the history of the censorship of Hebrew books in Italy in the sixteenth century'' (1943) * ''The paintings of the Dura synagogue'' (1947)

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sonne, Isaia 1887 births 1960 deaths Italian emigrants to the United States Austro-Hungarian Jews 20th-century Italian historians Historians of Jews and Judaism Jewish American historians Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)