ABRAHAM BEN ISAAC HA-KOHEN OF ZAMOŚĆ

ABRAHAM BEN ISAAC HA-KOHEN OF ZAMOŚĆ (18^th century), Polish rabbi and author. Abraham served for a short period as head of the bet din in Tarlow, but, as he was extremely wealthy, he was able to resign his position and in 1754 returned to Zamość, his birthplace. There he occupied himself with both religious and secular studies. He knew German, Polish, and Latin. In 1753 he was a member of the Zamość delegation to the central committee session of the *Councils of the Lands, held at Jaroslav. In 1754 he participated in the conference held at Constantinov where he was a signatory to the ban passed there on the printers of the Sulzbach Talmud. From this time, he played an active role in Polish Jewish life and became widely known. In the *Emden-*Eybeschuetz dispute he opposed the official line of the Council of Four Lands which supported Eybeschuetz and he defended Jacob Emden (with whom he corresponded in 1759–60). He strove zealously against any mystical messianic and Shabbatean revival and signed the 1753/54 letters of protest against the Shabbateans. Beit Abraham, his book of responsa and talmudic novellae, was printed in 1753; the book contained also the novellae of his father Isaac b. Abraham ha-Kohen, as well as his own halakhic novellae, in an appendix called Minḥah Belulah.

bibliography:

Preface to Beit Abraham (1753); J. Emden, Sefer ha-Shimmush (1758), 81a; Z. Horowitz, Kitvei ha-Ge'onim (1928), 138, no. 2; M. Tamari (ed.), Zamość bi-Ge'onah u-ve-Shivrah (1953), 41, 48–49; Halpern, Pinkas, index.

[Yehoshua Horowitz]