Zwi Hirsch Ashkenazi

Zwi Hirsch Ashkenazi

Zwi Hirsch ben Jakob Aschkenasi (also: Aschkenazi ; born 1656 in Velké Meziříčí ; died on May 3, 1718 in Lemberg ), called Chacham Zwi after the title of one of his collections of responses , was a rabbi and Talmud scholar , best known for his relentless struggle against the teachings and students of the pseudo-Messiah Sabbetai Zwi .

Life

Aschkenasi received his first training from his grandfather, Rabbi Ephraim ben Jakob ha-Kohen in Alt-Ofen . Between 1676 and 1679 Aschkenasi stayed in Saloniki with Elijahu Cobo and in Constantinople to learn the Sephardic tradition of studying the Talmud. There he received the title Chacham and the surname Ashkenazi . When he returned to Ofen, he married. His wife and daughter were killed in the siege of Oven by Leopold I , and Ashkenazi fled to Sarajevo , where he officiated as rabbi of the Sephardic community. He came to Berlin via Venice and Prague .

In Berlin, Aschkenasi married the daughter of the Altona chief rabbi Salman Mirels Neumark. In 1689 he settled in Altona and taught until 1707 as a rabbi in a teaching house that wealthy community members maintained for him. After the death of his father-in-law, he and Moses Rothenburg became his successor in 1707. However, the two fell out over a heated argument over the halachic question of whether a chicken found without a heart was kosher and suitable for consumption. Thereupon Ashkenazi left Altona in 1710 and followed a call to Amsterdam as rabbi of the Ashkenazi community . There he initially maintained friendly relations with the Sephardic community and their rabbi Solomon Aylion. In 1712 a collection of his responses was published under the title “Chacham Zwi” .

The situation changed for Ashkenazi when the Sabbatian traveler Nehemia Chajon asked the Sephardic community for permission to distribute his writings there. The community leaders commissioned Ashkenazi and the Jerusalem rabbi Moses Chagis, who was staying in Amsterdam, to provide an expert opinion on these writings, and in doing so bypassed their own community rabbi, Aylion. When the report finally condemned the writings, Aylion wrote a counter-report that nothing was objectionable. The dispute developed into a conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities, with the latter supporting Chajon while Ashkenazi and Chagis imposed the ban on him. Aschkenasi then resigned his office, left Amsterdam in 1714 and, at the invitation of the Sephardic community, went to London , then to Opatów in Poland and was appointed rabbi in Lviv shortly before his death in 1717.

Ashkenazi was considered a brilliant legal scholar and received requests for expert opinions from all over Europe.

Three of his sons also became rabbis, including Jakob Emden , who, like his father, was known for a strict anti-Sabbatian attitude.

literature

• Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews. Volume X, Leipzig 1868
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume I, 167–168, Czernowitz 1925
• Jewish Lexicon . Volume I, Sp. 502-503, Berlin 1927
• Aschkenasi, Zebi Hirsch Ben Jakob Ben Benjamin Seeb , in: Klatzkin, Jakob (ed.): Encyclopaedia Judaica, Judaism in Past and Present , Vol. 3: Apostel - Beerajim, Berlin: Eschkol, 1929
• Ashkenazi, Zevi Hirsch ben Jacob , in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Vol. 3 Anh-Az, Jerusalem, 1971. Col. 733-735
• Peter Freimark: The Chief Rabbinate, Altona - Wandsbek - Hamburg , in: Arno Herzig (Hrsg.): Die Juden in Hamburg 1590 bis 1990 , Vol. 2, Scientific contributions of the University of Hamburg to the exhibition "Four hundred years of Jews in Hamburg", Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 1991, pp. 177-185
• Michael Studemund-Halévy : Aschkenasi, Zwi Hirsch ben Jacob . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 28-29 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Brämer : " Aschkenasi, Zwi Hirsch ben Jacob ". In: Institute for the History of German Jews (Ed.): Das Jüdische Hamburg - a historical reference work , Göttingen 2006, p. 26.