Isaac Tyrnau

Isaak Tyrnau ( Isak Eisig or Nagyszombati Izsák ) was a rabbi and ritualist who lived towards the end of the 14th century (died before 1421). He is best known as the author of a book on Jewish customs ( Sefer ha- Minhagim ).

Little is known about his life. After it was assumed for a long time that his name was derived from the then Hungarian, now Slovak city of Trnava , today people tend to believe that it is the place Tyrnau in Styria . He was born in Vienna , where his most important teacher was Abraham Klausner . From Vienna he evidently moved to Tyrnau in Styria and from there possibly traveled on to Pressburg in order to officiate as rabbi there, although some experts doubt that he ever stayed in Pressburg. It is also known that in 1420 he discussed a divorce case with Jakob Moelin .

The meaning of Tyrnaus is based on his Sefer ha-Minhagim . Like his teacher Klausner, who wrote a book of the same name, he laid down customs and rules of conduct for the whole year, which were subsequently followed in most of the Jewish communities in the Duchy of Austria , the Kingdom of Hungary and Styria. As Tyrnau indicates in the foreword of the book, he intended to unify the customs with its publication. The Black Death around 1348 almost completely destroyed the German Jewish communities. The number of scholars had decreased so much that in some places there were "only two or three people who had a real knowledge of local customs". The book was very popular among German and Polish Jews . It was first printed in Hebrew in Venice in 1566 and later reprinted many times as an appendix to the prayer book . A German translation, which also appeared in numerous reprints, was published by Simon Günzburg in Mantua in 1590 .

literature

• Encyclopedia Judaica . Volume 15, p. 1491.

Web links

• Sefer HaMinhagim (Hebrew full text, pdf; 3.6 MB)