NEPPI, HANANEL

NEPPI, HANANEL (Grazziadio; 1759–1863), Italian rabbi and physician. Neppi was born in Ferrara and studied under Jacob Moses ayash and Solomon Lampronti. He was a rabbi in Ferrara, and represented his community at the assembly of jewish notables called by Napoleon in Paris (1806). In 1822 he settled in Cento, where he was rabbi until his death. (The inscription on his tombstone was engraved on a wall of the Cento synagogue.) His works include Zekher Ẓaddikim li-Verakhah, a biographical and bibliographical lexicon of earlier Jewish scholars, modeled on the Shem ha-Gedolim of Ḥ.J.D. Azulai and printed together with the Toledot Gedolei Yisrael of mordecai samuel ghirondi (1853); Livyat Ḥen, a collection of responsa in six volumes, in manuscripts, some of which were printed by Yare (1908); sermons (in Mss.). An ardent student of Kabbalah, Hananel was styled "ḥakham ḥen" by his contemporaries. A catalog of his library was published at Lemberg in 1873. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ghirondi-Neppi, 115–6; Mortara, Indice; Y. Jare, in: Festschrift… A. Harkavy (1908), 470. (Shlomo Simonsohn)