Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (, 1035 – 1106) was a Jewish Italian lexicographer. He authored the Arukh, a notable dictionary of Talmudic and Midrashic words, and consequently he himself is often referred to as "the Arukh".
Biography
He was born in Rome not later than 1035 to one of the most notable Roman families of Jewish scholars. Owing to an error propagated by Azulai, he has been regarded as a scion of the house of De Pomis. However, according to present scholarship, it is almost a certainty that he belonged to the Anaw (, ) family. Nathan's father, Jehiel ben Abraham, aside from being an acknowledged authority on the ritual law, was, like the majority of the contemporary Italian rabbis, a liturgic poet.
The details of Nathan's sad life must be excerpted and pieced together from several autobiographic verses appended to the first edition of his lexicon. It appears that he began life not as a student, but as a peddler of linen wares, which was then considered a distasteful occupation. The death of his employer caused him to abandon trade for the Torah. He returned home, where his father began to bestow upon him the treasures of learning, the accumulation of which was continued under foreign masters.
First, Nathan went to Sicily, whither Matzliach ibn al-Batzaq had just returned from a course of study under Hai Gaon, the last of the Pumbedita geonim. It was there that Nathan garnered that Babylonian learning which has led some to the erroneous notion that he had himself pilgrimed to Pumbedita.
Then Narbonne enticed him, where he sat under the prominent exegete and aggadist Moshe ha-Darshan. On his way home he probably lingered for a while at the several academies flourishing in Italy, notably at Pavia, where a certain Rabbi Moses was head master, and at Bari, where Moses Kalfo taught. He arrived home, however, from his scholarly travels some time before the death of his father, which occurred about the year 1070, and which gave him the opportunity of illustrating the simplicity of funeral rites which he had been advocating.
The presidency of the rabbinic college was thereupon entrusted by the Roman community to Jehiel's three learned sons: Daniel, Nathan, and Abraham – 'the geonim of the house of Rabbi Jehiel', as they were styled. Daniel, the eldest, seems to have composed a commentary on the mishnaic section Zeraim, from which the Arukh quotes frequently, and to have stood in friendly relations with Christian scholars. The three brothers rapidly acquired general recognition as authorities on the Torah; and numerous inquiries were addressed to them. Their most frequent correspondent was Solomon ben Isaac ("Yitzhaki"), an Italian scholar who is not to be identified with Rashi.
Nathan's private life was extremely sad. All his children died very young; and the bereaved father sought solace in philanthropy and scholarly application. In the year 1085 he built a communal bathhouse conforming to the ritual law; and about seventeen years later (September, 1101) he and his brothers erected a beautiful synagogue. In February 1101 he had completed his magnum opus, the Arukh.
The Arukh
Sources
The sources of this work are numerous. Aside from the Arukh of Tzemach ben Poltoi, which he utilized (it should be stated, however, that Rapoport and Geiger deny this), he used a very large number of additional works. Above all, he placed under contribution the information received, in both oral and written form, from R. Maẓliaḥ and R. Moses ha-Darshan, the former of whom, in particular, through his studies under Hai, had made himself the repository of Eastern learning. The entire extent of Nathan's indebtedness to his authorities can not be estimated, for the reason that of the hundreds of books cited by him many have not been preserved. But none will deny his obligation to R. Gershom of Mainz, whom he repeatedly quotes, though, as Kohut rightly maintains against Rapoport, he can not have been his personal disciple.
Similarly he used the writings of R. Hananeel b. Chushiel and R. Nissim ben Jacob, both living at Kairwan. So frequent, in fact, were the references to R. Hananeel in the lexicon that R. Jacob Tam, for example, regarded the work as based entirely on R. Hananeel's commentaries, while the author of the Or Zarua, as a matter of course, referred to R. Hananeel almost all of the lexicon's anonymous statements.
Hai Gaon, again, figures very frequently in its pages, sometimes simply designated as "the Gaon," while it has particularly assimilated all philologic material that is contained in his commentary on the mishnaic order Tohorot.