Benjamin Musaphia (also called Benjamin ben Immanuel Musaphia or Mussafia and Dionysius), Jewish doctor, scholar and kabbalist, was born around Spain, and died in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1675.

Biography

Musaphia married Sara Abigail da Silva, daughter of Semuel da Silva, in 1628. Their sons and grandsons joined the court of the Gottorps, and a daughter was married to Gabriel Milan, who would later be appointed governor of the Danish West-Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands). Around this time, Musaphia graduated from the Padua medical school, which was regarded as the best of it's kind at the time.

After Sara's death on August 7, 1634, Musaphia dedicated Zekher Rav, an adaptation of the story of Creation in which all Hebrew roots are used exactly once, to her. It was first published in Amsterdam in 1635, and a second edition with a Latin translation was published in Hamburg in 1638.

Another work was published in 1640, namely Sacro-Medicæ Sententiæ ex Bibliis, a medical treatise containing about 800 sentences on medicine. It contained a section on alchemy that created some stirring at the time. Musaphia also dedicated a work on ebb and flow to Christian IV of Denmark in 1642.

In 1646, while living in Glückstadt, Holstein, Musaphia was appointed royal physician to the Danish court by Christian IV.

Around 1648, probably in connection with the death of Christian IV, Musaphia went to Amsterdam and joined the college of rabbis. In 1655, he published an extended version of Nathan ben Jehiels Talmudic dictionary Aruk (ca. 1100), titled Musaf he-'Aruk, detailing many Jewish customs. The preface states that he had been collecting this information since a young boy. Musaphia was also working on a revised version of the Talmud, which was nevertheless never published, and the manuscripts have since been lost.

In the mid-1660s, Musaphia was caught up in the Sabbatian movement, which proclaimed that Sabbatai Zevi was the new Messiah, and that the apocalypse was near.

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia: MUSSAFIA (MUSAPHIA), BENJAMIN BEN IMMANUEL (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1025&letter=M)
• The medical school of Padua and its Jewish graduates (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12017898&dopt=Abstract)
• Zecher Rav (http://www.seforimonline.org/seforim3.html)

Sources

• H. C. Terslin, Guvernør over Dansk Vestindien Gabriel Milan og hans Efterkommere (Helsingør, 1926)
• Hauch-Fausbøll, Jødernes Færden og Ophold i den Danske State i 17. Aarh. (Tidsskrift for Jødisk Historie og Literratur II)
• Kayserling, Jødernes Historie
• J. Margolinsky, Benjamin Musaphia (Tidsskrift for Jødisk Historie og Literratur III)