Breslau, Joseph Moses ben David
BRESLAU, JOSEPH MOSES BEN DAVID
BRESLAU, JOSEPH MOSES BEN DAVID (1691–1752), German rabbinical scholar apparently born in the city of that name. Breslau studied under Abraham *Broda, whose daughter he married. He served as rabbi in Krefeld and, from 1743 until his death, in Bamberg. He was author of (1) Shoresh Yosef (1730), on the laws and principles of Migo (in talmudic law the credence given to a party in a lawsuit on the premise that if he were lying he could have told a more convincing lie); (2) Ḥok Yosef (1730), on the laws of Passover, comprising novellae on the Oraḥ Ḥayyim sections of the *Shulḥan Arukh (429–94). In it Breslau criticizes the Ḥok Ya'akov of Jacob Reischer. The two books were published together under the title Ḥukkim Tovim (1767). Reischer wrote a reply entitled Lo Hibbit Ayen be-Ya'akov, which was published in the 1814 edition of Ḥukkim Tovim; (3) Ketonet Yosef, sermons, published by his son, Abraham of Muehlhausen, as an appendix to the Toledot Avraham (1769) of Broda. His glosses on Oraḥ Ḥayyim and on Yoreh De'ah as well as responsa remain in manuscript.
bibliography:
Fuenn, Keneset, 459; A. Eckstein, Geschichte der Juden im ehemaligen Fuerstbistum Bamberg (1898), 171–3; S.M. Chones, Toledot ha-Posekim (1910), 262.
[Yehoshua Horowitz]