Isaac Lampronti - Teacher

Teacher

In 1709 Lampronti was appointed teacher at the Italian Talmud Torah, receiving a monthly salary of twelve scudi in return for devoting the larger part of his day to teaching chiefly Hebrew grammar, arithmetic, and Italian. Lampronti gave his pupils his own homilies on the weekly sections, composed in Italian, for practise in translating into Hebrew. He also set some of his pupils to copy from the sources material which he needed for the encyclopedic work he had undertaken.

The directors of the community, who thought this interfered with his duties as teacher, forbade him, in October, 1725, to keep the material for his work in the schoolhouse. When the Spanish Talmud Torah was discontinued, in 1729, the pupils of this school also passed into the hands of Lampronti. Thus he became the teacher of most of the members of the community, and long after his death it was said in the community of Ferrara, "All the learning found among us is derived from the mouth of our father Isaac."

In addition to his duties as teacher he filled the position of preacher, from 1704, in the Sephardic community, and, beginning with 1717, in the Italian synagogue. His sermons, which were very popular, have not been preserved. He mentions one of them, on truth and untruth, in referring to his "Sefer ha-Derushim Shelli" in an article of his "Paḥad Yiẓḥaḳ" (letter מ, article ). His funeral oration ("Darke Shalom") on Samson Morpurgo he mentions in his approbation to the latter's responsa "Shemesh Ẓedaḳah." His name is connected with an Ark of the Law in the Sephardic synagogue at Ferrara, placed there by him in 1710, at his own cost.

In 1718 Lampronti was appointed a full member of the rabbinical college. His signature as the latest member, following those of Mordecai Zahalon, Shabbethai Elhanan Recanati, and Samuel Baruch Borghi, is found in a responsum of the yeshibah of Ferrara of the year 1727, which he quotes (letter ב, p. 20d).