Mordecai Ghirondi

Mordecai Samuel ben Benzion Aryeh Ghirondi (born in Padua October 1799; died there January 4, 1852) was an Italian Jewish author and chief rabbi of Padua.

Ghirondi studied at the rabbinical college of Padua, in which he was appointed professor of theology (1824). In 1829 he was appointed assistant rabbi of Padua; two years later he became chief rabbi. He was a recognized authority in rabbinics, and was consulted by rabbis of several communities.

Ghirondi was an avid bibliophile, and parts of his book collection are now in the Montefiore Library in Jews' College in London and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.[1]

He wrote:

• Toko Raẓuf Ahabah, a work on ethics produced when he was only sixteen years old (Pisa, 1818)
• "Ma'amar Keriyyat ha-Borot," a treatise on artesian wells, showing references to them in the Talmud (printed in I. S. Reggio's Iggerot Yosher, Vienna, 1834).
• His most important work, Toledot Gedole Yisrael, a biographical and bibliographical dictionary of Italian rabbis and secular scholars.

He had in his possession Graziadio Nepi's biographical work entitled Zeker Ẓaddiḳim; to this he added 831 numbers of his own, two-thirds of which are not found in any earlier biographical dictionary. The combined work was published by Ephraim Raphael Ghirondi, the author's son: Nepi's and Ghirondi's were printed on opposite pages (Trieste, 1853). The latter also wrote Ḳebuẓat Kesef, responsa, in two parts, and Liḳḳuṭe Shoshannim, novellæ, in two volumes (both unpublished). Letters of Ghirondi's on different subjects were published in Kerem Ḥemed (ii. 52; iii. 88 et seq.; iv. 13).