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THIS CHAPTER, my contribution to an issue of Studia Rosenthaliana focusing on sources relating to Dutch Jewish history, is an analysis of a single sabbath morning sermon by Saul Levi Morteira. Parts of this sermon I have already discussed, but I believe that it is worthy of a fuller treatment. The manuscript text—two pages front and back in the fifth volume of the Budapest manuscript collection of Morteira's sermons—looks like almost all of the others, though slightly longer (most of the sermons end near the bottom of the third side), for reasons that will become clear. Yet it is an intriguingly complex text, illustrating several characteristic techniques of the master preacher, and it is unique in an important way.
The precise date of delivery of the original sermon cannot be determined, as Morteira generally did not date his sermons unless there was a special reason to do so. However, an approximate date can be estimated from Morteira's practice of preaching on successive verses of the parashah every year. The theme-verse (nosé) of this sermon is from ‘Vayigash’: ‘He wept aloud, and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard’ (Gen. 45: 2). This is the eighteenth verse of the parashah (sermons on sixteen of the previous verses—all except for Gen. 44: 28—have been preserved). Since Morteira began his regular preaching in 1619, it could not have been delivered earlier than 1637, but since he occasionally repeated sermons—as indeed he would this one—a reasonable estimate would be that it was delivered in the mid- 1640s.
The sermon, however, pointed both backwards and forwards in time. As he frequently did, Morteira used his introductory paragraph to refer to a sermon he had delivered some twenty-five years earlier on ‘Vayeshev’ using as his theme-verse Genesis 37: 2. Since this is the second verse of the parashah, the sermon was delivered at the very beginning of his Amsterdam preaching career in 1620 (the sermon on Gen. 37: 3 is dated 1621 in the manuscript). Characteristically, Morteira reviewed the contents of his earlier sermon for the benefit of those who had not heard it or had forgotten it.
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