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the
name Cassuto
Berber origin?
According
to Beth Hatefutsoth, The
Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, (P.O.B. 39359, 61392, Tel-Aviv,
Israël), letter received august 3 1998 by The French Bob Cassuto part
of the name is of berber origin: CASSUTO, CAPSUTO, CAFSUTO.
Many Jewish family names are linked to places of origin or residence.
The three surnames in this group are based on CAFSA/GAFSA in Tunisia.
The suffix—UT is of Berber origin and the suffix —O was added under
Spanish and Italian influence. So the name means: coming from Cafsa.
The family name CASSUTO is documented since the mid-17th century. Distinguished
bearers of the Jewish family name CASSUTO include the Italian Historian,
Educator and Author, Moshe David (Umberto) CASSUTO ( 1883-1951, see
below).
These data are derived from the site of Bob and Francine Cassuto. See
more about the name
of Cassuto through all ages and on all continents on this site.
Another
hypothesis
Another
hypothesis is also based on the original spelling of CAFSUTO and takes
it, that the O is added later. In old documents the name is noted in
Hebrew als "Kaftsut" -  -
which could be understood as a substantive form of the hebrew verb "kafats"
-  - which has several
meanings: to close, to spring, to bounce.
In that case the name has a Hebrew origin. Most acceptable is the meaning:
to close.
My fantasy pictures ancient Cassuto's or Kafsuts as gatekeepers in Jerusalem,
Hebron or why not Gafsa? Moreover there is a rumor to be found in letters
of Italian Cassuto's, written to the late George Cassuto Izn, that there
once was a family coat of arms with a key.
But of course this is all pure speculation. Further research is needed.
In Holland there are several surnames which are analogue to this interpretation
of Cassuto as a derivation of "kafats": Springer, Sluiter
etc.
A weak point is that the suffix "ut" points to a state: the
closing, or the closedness, or the bouncing. It seems not to be an existing
word nowadays, I can't find the word Kaftsut in my dictionaries. The
suffix for an active doer - a closer or bouncer - in Hebrew is "an".
"Kaftsan" - springer, jumper - is an existing word and means:
water-flea!
Big head?
Bob
Cassuto mentions on his site:
'Another interpretation can be found in the dictionary recently published
in Brazil "Dicionario sefaradi de sobranomes". The name Cassuto could
find its origin in the name "Cabeçudo" meaning big head. This
name was localized in Portugal, in Tavira, before 1400.'
Cassuto or Sacuto?
Lately I struck upon the suggestion, that the name Cassuto results from
the inversion (metathesis) of consonants in another sephardic name:
Sacuto.
Read more about a wealth of Sephardic namens on this page:
www.sehardicgen.com
To me this hypothesis sounds not too plausible; it is hardly thinkable
because of the considerable difference in pronounciation, which would
not go unnoticed in everyday life.
Cassuto
or Cassutto?
I must
mention the spelling Casutto with double t. This originated from an
inadvertent registration in the 19th century by my greatgrandfather
or his father Juda Cassuto. So my grandfather and his children Max,
Ernest and George spelled Cassutto. George Cassuto saw to a correction
after having in a juridical procedure demonstrated the mistake. This
took place about 1960. Max, his elder brother and my (Rob's) father,
followed him (and consequently his children Albert, Robbert and Irene),
but not Ernest. So the children of the latter still spell Cassutto.
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Moses
Vita Cassuto
(plm. 1700-1760?)
Moses Vita Cassuto is a little-known member of the early eighteenth century
of a distinguished Jewish Florentine family of which happily representatives
are still with us.
Posterity should know him as one of the long list of Jewish travellers
whose painstaking records of their often painful journeys did so much
to guide their contemporaries and to enrich our knowledge in later ages.
Moses
Cassuto in his diary written for his wife discloses incidentally something
of himself.
He was a merchant of reasonable means, a dealer in precious stones but
an educated man of the world, accustomed to mix in the highest society;
he was devoutly religious and devoted to his family, and we see him
as a patient (if not always very precise) recorder of things seen and
heard, and a careful scribe. In visiting places attributed Biblical
or other pious associations, he is frankly credulous and uncritical.
Perhaps be is not to be reckoned in the front rank of either diarists
or travel writers, but in this restricted field he certainly by his
sincerity holds his place and our interest, whether as Jews or historians.
Moses's diary is written in the Italian of the period, but bas occasional
descriptive rubrics and quotations in Hebrew, usually concerning Hebrew
communities.
His first
journey to the Holy land took place 1733-1735
At the commencement of the diary proper, he explains that the reason
for his journey was to take his new-born son to be brought up in the
Holy Land, to study the law of God and nothing else; accordingly he
travelled to Hebron by way of A1exandria and Cairo with this infant-in-arms,
and accompanied by one servant - returning overland through Northem
Palestine, Saida, Damascus, A1eppo, Istanbul, Belgrade, Vienna, and
Venice, then home to Florence. The journey took a year and a half, from
8 October 1733 to 5 April 1735, and proved most arduous.
Second
journey was to the north, 1741-1743.He travelled partly in company with
his brother David Cassuto and his faithful servant, the companion of
his previous journey, Isache di Tranquillo Gallico, and two others.
The party first visited Genoa, his wife's home town, where he had met
and married her in 1723. From there the itinerary takes him through
Monaco, Paris, and Calais to England. After a short stay in London they
retumed to Holland and journeyed through Germany and Austria back to
Florence.
More about
Moses Vita Cassuto and his journeys on a special Moses
Cassuto travels page
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| Umberto
Cassuto (Moshe David, 1883-1951) w+ws)q
dwd h#wm
Bible scholar. Born in Florence, Italy, he studied there at the university
and the Collegio Rabbinico. After graduating in humanities and receiving
his rabbinic diploma, he took up teaching positions in both institutions.
At this time his main research was on the history and literature of
the Jews of Italy.
From 1914 to 1925 Cassuto was chief rabbi of Florence and then in 1925
became professor of Hebrew language and literature in the University
of Florence and then took the chair of Hebrew at the University of Rome.
Here he began to catalogue the Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican but
the 1938 anti-Semitic laws forced him out of his positions and he continued
his academic career at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
He had a son Nathan and a daughter Hulda, see below
He edited a Bible with Hebrew commentary that has remained an Israel
school classic. His interests focused on Bible exegesis in which he
contested the documentary theory of Wellhausen on the origin of the
Pentateuch, postulating its redaction to a school around the 10th century
BCE.
Cassuto also made important contributions to Ugaritic studies.
Bibliography CASSUTO, Umberto.
The documentary hypothesis and the composition of the Pentateuch: eight
lectures by U. Cassuto. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams.
Pp. xii, 117. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961
CASSUTO, Umberto. A commentary on the book of Genesis. Translated from
the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew
University, 1961-1964
CASSUTO, Umberto. A commentary on the book of Exodus. Translated from
the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Pp. xvi, 509. Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
Hebrew University, 1967
CASSUTO, Umberto. Biblical and oriental studies. Translated from the
Hebrew and Italian by Israel Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
Hebrew University, 1973-1975
CASSUTO, Umberto. Storia della letteratura ebraica postbiblica. Pp.
xvi, 212. Firenze: Casa editrice Israel, 1938
Links: The Virtual Jewish History Tour - Florence Tempio Maggiore, The
Great Synagogue of Florence
from Wikiverse:
Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto, (1883 - 1951), was
born in Florence, Italy.
He studied there at the university and the Collegio Rabbinico. After
getting a degree and Semicha, he taught in both institutions. From 1914
to 1925, he was chief rabbi of Florence. In 1925 he became professor
of Hebrew language and literature in the University of Florence and
then took the chair of Hebrew at the University of Rome. When the 1938
anti-Semitic laws forced him from this position, he moved to the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
Umberto's son Nathan was also a rabbi in Florence. He went into hiding
during World war II, was betrayed and perished in the Nazi death camps.
Nathan's wife and children were saved and emigrated to Israel. One child,
the architect David Cassuto (born 1938), played a key role in rebuilding
the Jewish quarter in the old city of Jerusalem. In the 1990s he was
for some years deputy mayor of Jerusalem.
more on Wikipedia
or on wikipedia
hebrew
Nathan
Cassuto (?
- 1944/45)
Son of
Umberto, first eye specialist then Chief Rabbi in Florence in the time
of the German occupation. He organised refuge for the persecuted Jews
but was himself arrested by the SS and he perished in the death camps.
His wife survived, but was killed in an ambush on an autobus full of
nurses on its way to the Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem 1948.
Parts of the witness of Hulda about her brother in a verbatim
of the Eichmann proces:
A. (=Hulda): And my brother, who was an eye specialist
and also an assistant at the University of Florence, returned to Jewish
studies, which were also very close to his heart, and this became his
occupation up to his last years; he returned to this, was ordained Rabbi,
and served afterwards as Assistant Rabbi in Milan, and later on as Chief
Rabbi in Florence.
Q. Did your brother also live in Florence?
A. He lived in Florence and was Rabbi of the community.
Q. Was any attempt made by the Jews in those days to escape?
A. In those days there was general panic among the Jews of Florence,
but they did not properly understand the danger. My brother, Dr. Nathan
Cassuto, took energetic action and tried hard to make the Jews aware
of the great danger threatening all the Jews of Italy.
Q. How did he try to do that?
A. He tried, he actually went from house to house, warned the Jews to
enter monasteries, to flee to the villages where they were not known
as Jews, to hide under assumed names. Furthermore, he also tried to
find financial help for those who needed it. At that time, he organized
a kind of committee for the aid of needy Jews, consisting of a very
small number of local Jews, and a priest from Florence also worked with
them, but I do not remember his name. They helped not only the Jews
of Florence, but also tens and hundreds of Jews who came from Northern
Italy, to cross over into the area where the Allies were already stationed.
.....................
A. ..... On 27 November of that year, after there had already been a
number of operations against Jews, who were simply taken from their
homes - on that day, a Sabbath, my husband came to the monastery, a
very rare occurrence, since we had indeed met him and my brother before,
but outside the place. That day he came to look for me and told me that
the day before, Friday afternoon, my brother had been taken, together
with the members of his committee, while they were having a meeting
somewhere, organizing their assistance work for the Jews.
Q. By whom was he taken?
A. He was taken by the SS.
....................
A. About my brother's fate I know only that he was taken from one camp
to another. After he had been in prison in Florence for three months,
they - both my sister-in-law and my brother - were transferred to camps.
They were both, for a certain time, in Auschwitz, and they even managed
to exchange some words in writing; he would send a note to her, and
once she sent a note to him. Afterwards they were separated. She was
sent to Bergen-Belsen and finally to Theresienstadt, and there she was
liberated. She reached this country in 1945. It is from her that I heard
many of the details I have just told you. Later she was herself killed
by Arabs in the convoy that went up to Mount Scopus in 1948.
Of my brother's fate we only know that he was taken from one camp to
another and that, in the end, he was in a camp of which one part was
apparently in Russian hands and another part in American hands. People
who came out of there and were liberated by the Americans gave us information
about him, about the final days, but since then we have heard nothing
more to this day.
Apparently
a book about Narhan Cassuto has been published:
Title: Scritti Memoria Di Nathan Cassuto (Italian and Hebrew) Author:
Cassuto, Nathan
Description:
Jeruasalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1986. 100 pages in Italian and 100 pages in Hebrew.
In Florence, Rabbi Nathan Cassuto, a physician and the son of a renowned
biblical scholar, went from house to house urging Jews to hide during
the holocaust. As a result, only 400 Jews were deported from florence.
This book remembers the Rabbi in his own language. S. Good.
Item # 000000000010083 $40.00 Buy Now
(see: http://www.judaicabooks.net/)
I found a review of the book om internet, a copy of a page from the Jewish
Quarterly:
from The Beth ha-Tefutsoth website:
Recollections from the Synagogue in Florence
Dr. Enzo Nitzani :
The Great Synagogue of Florence, Italy.
Model in the Permanent Exhibition of Beth Hatefutsoth
Beth Hatefutsoth Visual Documentation Center
On the Ninth
of Av, 1938, I sat with my father and brother on low benches in a room
adjacent to the synagogue. We had already heard of the imminent racial
decrees. In the dark we sang AL HEYKhALI ChEVLI KENAChASh NOShEKh (“For
my Temple I ache like someone bitten by a serpent”). I was too young
to understand the note of anguish in the conversation between my father
and Prof. David Cassuto – he too was planning his immigration to
Eretz Israel – but I remember the sadness of the meeting to this
day.
Fate was
particularly cruel to the Cassuto family. After immigrating to Israel
and joining the ranks of the Hebrew University, his son Nathan –
a doctor and rabbi of Florence – was killed in Auschwitz. His daughter
in law Hannah – who was saved from the furnaces of Auschwitz –
was killed by a sniper when a convoy to the Hebrew University campus
on Mount Scopus was attacked by the Arabs in 1948.
David
Cassuto (Israel)
David Cassuto
is the grandson of Umberto Cassuto.
The son
of Umberto Cassuto, Nathan Cassuto, was also a rabbi in Florence. He
perished in the Nazi death camps. Nathans children have been saved and
they emigrated with their mother to Israel. One of the Nathans children
is David Cassuto (1938), who became an architect, played an important
role in rebuilding the jewish quarter in the old city of Jerusalem.
In the nineties he was for some years vice mayor of Jerusalem.
architectural
page (Italian)
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Alfonso
Cassuto (1910-1999)
On 25 March 1975 the librarian of Amsterdam University Library, Professor
S. van der Woude, and the Portuguese antiquarian bookdealer and collector
Alfonso Cassuto signed an agreement of sale whereby the famous Cassuto
collection came into the possession of the library, to be housed in
the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana.
Originally
from Hamburg and having emigrated to Portugal when Hitler rose to power
in 1933, the Cassuto family built up the library over four generations
to form one of the most outstanding Sephardi collections of works by
and about Jews originally from Spain and Portugal. It contains around
1,500 items, more than a third of which date from before 1800 (among
them various unica), alongside publications from the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, studies on the subject, bibliographies, broadsheets,
portraits and other objects, in addition to around sixty manuscripts
and numerous letters, extracts and documents.
The foundation
for the collection was laid by Jehuda de Mordechai Cassuto (1808-1893),
a native of Amsterdam who moved to Hamburg and who acquired a sizeable
library of Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew works in 1835 in the form
of a collection started in the seventeenth century by a Portuguese Jew
in Hamburg. Isaac Cassuto (1848-1923), Jehuda’s son, expanded the
library considerably and published historical articles based on the
collected material.
His son Jehuda Leon Cassuto (1878-1953) had little time to devote to
the contents of the library, although he lavished large sums on new
acquisitions, leaving the study and description of the books to his
son, Alfonso Cassuto (1910-1999). A task which the latter took up enthusiastically,
while later also contributing to the further extension of the collection.
In 1972, for example, he published a significant article in Studia Rosenthaliana
on some of the more costly items in the collection, entitled ‘Seltene
Bücher aus meiner Bibliothek’; the good relations with Bibliotheca
Rosenthaliana which developed (building on earlier contacts too) probably
helped persuade Alfonso Cassuto some years later to sell his collection
to the Amsterdam University library. There it is included in the famous
Bibliotheca
Rosenthaliana
^Isaac Cassuto
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Álvaro
Leon Cassuto (b. 1938)
 Son
of Alfonso Cassuto, who lived in Hamburg and fled the nazi's to Portugal.
Appointed
subdirector of the RDP Symphonic Orchestra {Portuguese Radio Broadoasting
Station) in 1970, and elected conductor in 1975, Álvaro Cassuto
entered upon an active International career conducting some European and
American orchestras {BBC, Berlin, Prague, Brussels, London and Philadelphia
Phillarmonic Orchestras among several others). He studied with ,Freitas
Branco in Lisbon and with Von Karajan in Berlin, became assistant of Leopold
Stokowsky in New York in 1968, and fn 1969 he was awarded the prize Koussevitzky
by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also graduated in Law by the Lisbon
University and in Orchestra Conduction by the Vienna Conservatory.
He was director of the Symphony Orchestra of the California University
since 1974. As composer, he writes mainly for orchestra; his works have
been performed in several countries and already published in the USA and
Germany.
from the Jerusalem Post:
Wandering maestro
By Michael Ajzenstadt
(November 7) - Like most orchestral conductors these days, the life of
Alvaro Cassuto resembles that of a vagabond who spends most of his time
in airports and hotel rooms.
The Portugese maestro now spends part of his time in a hotel room in Herzliya,
in preparation for a series of concerts with the Ra'anana Symphonette
Orchestra starting tomorrow night.
"You cannot imagine how calm I am when I realize that what is happening
here has nothing to do with what people see on television [about the rioting].
To be here these days and see the country living normally is a great joy,"
he says.
Cassuto's family history epitomizes the concept of the wandering Jew through
the ages. "My ancestors come from Livorno in Italy, and as the Cassuto
of the Bible fame came from Florence, I know that sometime in the 18th
century we were cousins. My grandfather left Italy and came to Hamburg.
And then in 1933 my grandfather and my father moved to Oporto in Portugal,
which is where I was born 61 years ago."
Why Oporto of all places? "There was a small Jewish
community there and they invited my father, a 22-year-old philology
student in Hamburg, to come and teach in their school," he says.
And so Cassuto himself was educated in Portugal, but enjoyed a Germanic
education. "Music was part of the household. My grandfather played
the violin and my grandmother played the piano, so music was in the
house day in and day out."
In Vienna, Cassuto went on to study conducting, and after he won the
Koussevitsky award in Tanglewood in 1969, his conducting career began
to flourish. He lived in the US for 18 years, and worked as a professor
of music at the University of California, music director of the Rhode
Island Philharmonic and of the National Orchestra of New York.
In 1986, Cassuto was invited to return to Portugal. There he became
founder and music director of the private New Portuguese Philharmonica
and in 1993 of the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra.
Cassuto first conducted in Israel in the late 1970s,
when he was invited by Lukas Foss to lead the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
Then he returned three years ago for a series of concerts with the Ra'anana
Symphonette, and now is back again with the same orchestra.
"There is a lot of potential in the Symphonette. The musicians
are very dedicated and extremely professional - they have a great willingness
to make music and so it remains in the hands of the conductor to make
music. " Alvaro Cassuto leads the Ra'anana Symphonette Orch estra
in music by Rossini, Korngold, Beethoven and Bach, the latter in memory
of Yitzhak Rabin. The soloist is Symphonette concertmaster Nitai Tzori.
Concerts take place in Ra'anana's Yad Labanim tomorrow, Thursday, and
Saturday at 9 p.m.
(source Jerusalem Post, 2000) |
About him I found out he was occupied in the film business in Italia.
Most known feat: He was producer of "La notte",
the classic by Michelangelo Antonioni.