One thousand and one years ago, on 9 Tammuz 4685, corresponding to 925 CE, the southern Italian city of Oria was shaken by a Fatimid invasion that brought heavy destruction. Ten rabbis and community leaders were killed for sanctifying God’s name, and a boy named Shabbatai Donnolo was taken captive.
Oria was then a thriving center of Torah learning in southern Italy, but the attack devastated one of the most prestigious Jewish communities in the diaspora. After some time, Donnolo’s family managed to ransom him in Taranto, and he returned to his people.
Donnolo went on to become one of the most influential figures in medieval Jewish history. He became the first Jew in Europe to write medical books in Hebrew, breaking ground in medicine and anatomy, and his best-known work, "Hakhmoni," is a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that includes ideas in astronomy and anatomy. He was also among the first to place the concept of “man as a small world” at the center of Jewish thought.
Rashi later cited him in his commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Eruvin, on the seven stars, writing, "And Rabbi Shabbtai Donnolo, the physician, of blessed memory, explained this well in his book Hakhmoni." The article says Donnolo sought wisdom from sages in India, Babylonia, and among Muslims, concluded that astronomy does not conflict with Torah, and left a legacy remembered both in Jewish sources and in memorials in Oria and Jaffa, including a street and hospital named for him.
