David Nieto

Born in Venice in 1654 to a family of Portuguese Jewish descent, David Nieto trained in medicine at the University of Padua and worked as a physician, preacher, and religious judge in Livorno, where he also pursued astronomy and mathematics and issued a 1702 study of calendar reckoning. In 1701 he was called to London as Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation at Bevis Marks, a post he held until his death in 1728. His best-known book, Mateh Dan (also titled Kuzari Sheni, 1714), was written in Hebrew with Spanish annotations as a dialogue modeled on Judah Halevi's Kuzari and defended the authority of the Oral Torah. In Eish Das (1715) he engaged the teachings of the Sabbatean writer Nehemiah Hayon. An earlier discourse on divine providence drew charges of heresy that were resolved in his favor by Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi.