The Wanderer’s Guide to the Afterlife

The Wanderer’s Guide to the Afterlife

by Eliezer Segal

This year the literary world is commemorating the seven hundredth yahrzeit of Dante Alighieri who died on September 14, 1321. Dante is best known for his monumental poetic tour of the afterlife, the Divina Commedia, a work steeped in Christian and classical cultures. Hardly a legacy that should leave an imprint on Jewish culture.

And yet there was at least one Jewish author, a contemporary and neighbour of Dante, who was deeply influenced by the Florentine master and also made outstanding contributions to Hebrew letters. Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome was born in 1261 and wandered through Italian communities working at diverse professions, sometimes under the patronage of affluent Jewish bankers. Though he composed poems in Italian, his best known achievements were in Hebrew.

What has survived from his Hebrew oeuvre is a collection entitled the Maḥbarot, stitched together in a picaresque narrative framework according to the medieval Arabic “makama” format. This literary structure had been popularized in Spanish “Golden Age” Hebrew collections such as Judah al-Harizi’s Taḥkemoni, and by European writers like Boccaccio and Chaucer.

There are numerous literary genres represented in the pages of Maḥbarot Immanuel, including the earliest instances of Hebrew sonnets that follow the prevailing Italian conventions. Alongside religious hymns and tributes to an ethereal Beloved, one can find raunchy tales of erotic conquests. 

Although the spirit of Dante is discernible throughout Immanuel’s works, the most striking analogy is the final twenty-eighth section of the Maḥbarot, entitled “Tophet and Eden,” consisting of a tour of afterlife abodes, composed in rhymed prose.

“Tophet” was a location in Jerusalem mentioned in the Bible in connection with “the valley of Gehinom” as the site of a monstrous child sacrifice cult, and it came to be identified as the place of punishment for deceased sinners. 

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy largely in response to his predicament as an exile from his beloved Florence. As a Jew, Immanuel was no stranger to exile. The Jewish community in Rome was expelled by Papal decree in 1321, forcing the impoverished poet into a life of wandering through Italy. His most significant stopover was in the town of Gubbio where he became intimate with members of Dante’s literary circle and was about to achieve some financial security thanks to a Jewish banker named Daniel. His hopes were frustrated by the deaths in the same year of both Dante and Daniel.

The introductory passage to “Tophet and Eden” recounts how, at the age of sixty, the vicissitudes of his life and the death of a friend impelled him to ponder his mortality and his prospects in the next world. Towards that end, he was provided with an elderly angelic guide named Daniel, who performed the role assigned to the Latin poet Vergil in Dante’s masterpiece. This seems perfectly reasonable, in that the biblical Daniel provides the most explicit scriptural statement about the fates of the righteous and the wicked in the next world, comparable to the tour of Hades found in Vergil’s Aeneid. Nevertheless, some scholars believe that Immanuel’s guide was his cherished patron —or maybe even an epithet for Dante Alighieri!

Dante’s work is divided into three parts: the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. Jewish tradition speaks of only two options: the paradise equated with the garden of Eden; and the place of torment, Gehenna or Tophet. The latter in fact has more affinities to the Christian Purgatory in that it is usually a temporary state designed to purge the sinners of their moral flaws to allow them entry into Paradise. At any rate, Immanuel’s work is limited to these two sections, both of which are considerably shorter than Dante’s. Immanuel’s meandering journeys through those domains lack the systematically graded structure that defined Dante’s depictions. 

Immanuel, though well aware of his own moral shortcomings, feels assured of admission to Eden by virtue of his commentaries to several books of holy scripture. Isaiah, King Solomon, Jeremiah and other prophets heap praises upon him as the only interpreter who has ever grasped the true meaning of their words.

He describes the sublime abode set aside for the “ten imperial martyrs” who were tortured to death by the Romans for teaching Torah in defiance of Hadrian’s decree, and continue to plead before the heavenly throne on behalf of their exiled brethren. To be sure, a place in Paradise is allocated as well for the righteous among the gentiles.

From a literary perspective, Hell is usually the more interesting place to write and read about. Immanuel’s roster of sinners includes such unsurprising categories as nefarious biblical villains, persecutors of Israel, and heretical philosophers. The medical profession is represented by Hippocrates (for refusing to share his wisdom), and Galen (for belittling Moses). Among the other evildoers who languish in the pits of flaming torment are many who enjoyed undeserved reputations for virtue during their lifetimes. Some persons who committed trivial-sounding infractions must now acknowledge the long-range consequences for which they are being held culpable. Immanuel directs caustic condemnations against uncharitable misers—I strongly suspect that has something to do with his own failures to attract generous patrons. 

The sufferers in Tophet also include some obnoxious characters from Jewish communal life— boorish cantors, persons who assert exclusive entitlements to synagogue honours, and voyeurs who peep into the ritual baths. Arguably, there is something distinctly Jewish about the way Immanuel focuses on the communal dimensions more than on individuals.

In one of his sonnets, Immanuel lamented impishly that Eden must be a dull place inhabited by desiccated crones, whereas the passionate beauties will all reside in Tophet. 

Comments of this sort earned him enough notoriety for the Shulhan Arukh law code to declare that “lewd works like Immanuel’s book…may not be read on the Sabbath—and are forbidden even on weekdays as instances of ‘sitting in the seat of the scornful.’”

Nonetheless, his guide to “Tophet and Eden” might well turn out to be the last travel book you’ll ever need.

  • First Publication:
    • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, October 4, 2021, p. 22.
  • For further reading:
    • Alfie, Fabian. “Immanuel of Rome, Alias Manoello Giudeo: The Poetics of Jewish Identity in Fourteenth-Century Italy.” Italica 75, no. 3 (1998): 307–29.
    • Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Anthony Oldcorn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
    • Brener, Ann. “The Scroll of Love by Immanuel of Rome: A Hebrew Parody of Dante’s Vita Nuova.” Prooftexts 32, no. 2 (2012): 149–75.
    • Cassuto, Moshe David Umberto. Dante ve-‘immanu’el [Dante e Manoello]. Translated by Menahem Dorman. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965. [Hebrew]
    • Enelow, H. G. “Immanuel of Rome.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 16, no. 2 (1925): 209–12.
    • Fishkin, Dana W. “Situating Hell & Heaven: Immanuel of Rome’s ‘Mahberet Ha-Tophet V’ Ha-Eden.’” Ph.D., New York University, 2011.
    • Geiger, Abraham. “Der Jude Manoello, der Freund Dante’s.” Hebraïsche Bibliographie 3, no. 15 (1860): 59–60.
    • Gollancz, Hermann. “Introduction: Dante and Immanuel.” In Tophet and Eden (Hell and Paradise): In Imitation of Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso, from the Hebrew, edited by Hermann Gollancz, 5–13. London: University of London Press, 1921.
    • Kahanoff, Ezer. “Interpreting Emanuel HaRomi’s Inferno and Heaven through Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Ketav ‘Et le-‘Iyyun u-Meḥḳar 6 (2000): 31–45. [Hebrew]
    • Lewis, Harry S. “Immanuel of Rome.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 6 (1934): 277–308.
    • Nidler, Howard. “Dante, Emmanuel veha-Sofer ha-Yehudi.” Moznayim 57, no. 3 (1983): 34–45. [Hebrew]
    • Pagis, Dan. Change and Tradition in the Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy. The Keter Library: The Jewish People and Its Culture 5: Literature. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1976. [Hebrew]
    • Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959.
    • Steinschneider, Moritz. “Immanuel: Biographische und literarhistorische Skizze #7.” In Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Heinrich Malter and Alexander Marx, 1:286–90. Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1925.
    • Tchernichovsky, Shaul. Emmanuel ha-Romi: Monografia. Berlin: Eshkol, 1925. [Hebrew]

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