Boskowitz, Ḥayyim ben Jacob
BOSKOWITZ, ḤAYYIM BEN JACOB
BOSKOWITZ, ḤAYYIM BEN JACOB (18th century), rabbi and author. Little is known of his life, other than that he was born in Jerusalem and apparently lived there for many years. The evidence for this is that when he traveled abroad, apparently with the object of publishing his work, he referred to himself as "from the holy city of Jerusalem." His work, Toẓe'ot Ḥayyim, homiletical comments on the Pentateuch, with an exposition of the moral values to be learned from each verse, was published in Amsterdam in 1764. The bibliographer *Benjacob alone gives the date as 1760. The work was printed, along with the Pentateuch, together with the commentaries of Rashi, R. Samuel b. Meir (Rashbam), and Abraham ibn Ezra. A new edition appeared in Vienna in 1794. Toẓe'ot Ḥayyim was also published without the Pentateuch, but with various additions, at Zolkiev in 1772. At the time, Boskowitz was living at Brody, Galicia. He seems to have been in Poland as early as 1769, when he wrote an approbation Leḥem Terumah of Aaron b. Isaiah on the Sefer ha-Terumah.
bibliography:
Fuenn, Keneset, 344; Frumkin-Rivlin, 3 (1929), 83, addenda 45.
[Itzhak Alfassi]