Esh Dat, a polemical work against Nechemiah Chiya Hayyun, by R. David Nieto. London: Thomas Ilive, 1715. Bound with manuscript, another work by R. David Nieto in Spanish (see below).
Esh Dat is a polemical book comprising two dialogues against the Sabbatean movement and against the Sabbatean Nechemiah Hayyun of Amsterdam.
The present copy includes another part with a Spanish translation of the book (Es Dat, ò Fuego Legal), printed together with the Hebrew part, with a divisional title page in Spanish. This part is not included in most copies.
R. David Nieto (1654-1728), scholar of Torah and science. Dayan, orator and physician in Livorno, and later the first rabbi of the Sephardi community in London. Author of Kuzari Sheni and Mateh Dan. One of the leading opponents of Sabbateanism.
Nechemiah Chiya Hayyun
(ca. 1655-1730), a Sabbatean scholar and kabbalist, probably the most prominent Sabbatean after Shabtai Tzvi's death.
Between the Hebrew and Spanish parts, the present copy includes another work in manuscript ([17]-pages), in Spanish (with a few words in Hebrew), by R. David Nieto, entitled "Reflexiones Theologicas, Politicas y Morales, Sobre el execrable Systema de N. H. Hayon". This work of Nieto is a sort of appendix to his Esh Dat, in which Nieto persists in his sharp critique of Nechemiah Hayyun and the danger of his views, both theologically and morally, as well as socially and politically. This work has never before been printed (at the end of his introduction to the Spanish part of Esh Dat, Nieto writes that he refrained from publishing all his thoughts on the matter, and that he is keeping the remainder in manuscript, for whoever is interested to read them; apparently, he is referring to the present work).
The NLI catalogue records only a photocopy of the work, from the present copy. Several other copies of Esh Dat are known, which have this manuscript work included (most, like in the present copy, have it bound between the Hebrew and Spanish parts): a copy in the UCL library, London, from the Mocatta Collection (Mocatta Ms. 43); a copy in the University of Columbia Library (B893.1 N51); a copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Opp. Add. 8° II. 63); and a copy in the Klau Library, in the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (RBR E 184 c.1).
[1], 38 leaves; [17] handwritten pages; XII, 169 pages. Approx. 16 cm. Partly dark paper. Good-fair condition. Many stains. Marginal tears to title page of Spanish part, repaired with paper. New parchment binding.
Bookplates of Mozes Heiman Gans.
On the manuscript work, see at length:
• Alex Kerner, Lost in Translation, Found in Transliteration, Leiden, Boston, 2018, pp. 166-174.
• Raphael Loewe, The Spanish Supplement to Nieto's "Esh Dath", Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XLVIII (1981), pp. 268-296.
• Israel Solomons, David Nieto and some of his Contemporaries, Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), XII (1928-1931), pp. 31-33.
