Elia Levita

Living for a decade in the house of Cardinal Giles of Viterbo, he was one of the foremost teachers of Christian clergy, nobility, and intellectuals in Hebrew and in Jewish mysticism during the Renaissance.

At seventy years of age, Levita left his wife and children and departed in 1540 for Isny, in Bavaria, accepting the invitation of Paul Fagius to superintend his Hebrew printing-press there.

His monument in the graveyard of the Jewish community at Venice boasts of him that "he illuminated the darkness of grammar and turned it into light.

To his pupils especially belong Sebastian Münster, who translated Levita's grammatical works into Latin, and Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, the French ambassador in Venice.

[1] He has descendants living today, including former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron, who describes him as "my forefather Elijah Levita who wrote what is thought to have been the first ever Yiddish novel".