DATO, MORDECAI BEN JUDAH:

By: Richard Gottheil, Giuseppe Jare

Italian rabbi and preacher; born 1527; lived in various places in the territory of the house of Este; died after 1585. Steinschneider thinks it possible that he was a grandson of Angelo (= Mordecai) Dato, mentioned in Vogelstein and Rieger, "Gesch. der Juden in Rom," ii. 436. Dato was a pupil of the cabalistMoses Cordovero, and was himself an adept in the Cabala. He is honorably mentioned by Azariah de Rossi in connection with a Messianic prediction ("Me'or 'Enayim," ch. xliii.), by Menahem Azariah de Fano, and by Angelo Alatrini, who dedicated to him his "Angelica Tromba" (Ferrara, 1579). Dato's writings follow the Cabala of Cordovero and Luria. He added marginal notes to the "Asis Rimmonim," a compendium of his pupil Samuel Gallico's "Sefer ha-Pardes" (Venice, 1601), but the editors have so mutilated and misplaced his notes, which they have incorporated in the text, as to render the compendium unintelligible. It has since been reedited by M. A. de Fano (Mantua, 1623). Dato wrote "Migdal Dawid" (Tower of David), a disquisition on questions relating to the Cabala, and also annotations to the Zohar, both of which are in manuscript. The British Museum contains manuscripts of some of his sermons in the Italian language, but in Hebrew script ("Yad Yosef," p. 24), of a cabalistic commentary to Esther, and of collections of his poems.

G. G. J. G.