Judah Moscato (c. 1530 – c. 1593) was an Italian rabbi, poet, and philosopher of the sixteenth century; born at Osimo, near Ancona; died at Mantua.
As harassment of Jews in the Pontifical States worsened under Paul IV from 1555, Judah went to the home of his kinsman Minzi Beretaro at Mantua, where he enjoyed the society and instruction of the foremost Jews of his time, the brothers Moses, David, and Judah Provençal and Azariah dei Rossi.
Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that the ancient civilization and all the languages of culture were derived from Judaism and that it was the duty of the Jews to acquire these branches of knowledge, of which they had once been masters.
Moscato published, under the title Nefuẓot Yehudah (Venice, 1588; Lemberg, 1859), fifty-two sermons, which inaugurated a new epoch in homiletic literature.
Most of these were delivered in Hebrew or in Italian; and while they observe the rules of rhetoric they deal with their subjects naturally and without forced exegesis.