HEILPRIN, SAMUEL HELMANN BEN ISRAEL

HEILPRIN, SAMUEL HELMANN BEN ISRAEL (1675–1765), rabbi of Bohemia. Heilprin was born in Krotoszyn, and studied under Abraham b. Saul *Broda of Prague. He was rabbi of Kremsier (Kromeriz) in Moravia from 1720 to 1726 and from 1726 to 1751 of Mannheim, where he devoted himself particularly to strengthening the education system and established a yeshivah. In 1751 he succeeded Jonathan *Eybeschuetz as rabbi of Metz, remaining there for the rest of his life. While rabbi of Kremsier he was a firm opponent of Shabbateanism, and when in Mannheim he began to take an active part in the controversy against Eybeschuetz. He intensified his battle against him when in Metz as a result of the discovery of five amulets written by Eybeschuetz which increased his suspicion that Eybeschuetz did indeed belong to the Shabbatean sect. In 1752 Heilprin, together with the rabbis of Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Hanover, excommunicated Eybeschuetz. Only a few of Heilprin's glosses to the Talmud have been published. These are to be found in the Kol Yehudah (Amsterdam, 1729) of Judah b. Ḥanina Selig of Glogau (5a, 15c, 52d) and there is a responsum by him in Shav Ya'akov of Jacob b. Benjamin Katz of Prague (pt. 2 (Frankfurt, 1742), no. 20). The eulogy on him delivered by Ezekiel *Landau, author of the Noda bi-Yhudah, is published in Landau's Ahavat Ẓiyyon (vol. 1 (Prague, 1827), sermon 6). His son, uri shraga phoebus, who died while on a visit to his father's grave in Metz in 1770, served as rabbi of the towns of Hanau, Lissa, and Bonn.

bibliography:

Cahen, in: rej, 12 (1886), 289–94; I.T. Eisenstadt and S. Wiener, Da'at Kedoshim (1898), 59f.; D. Kahana, Toledot ha-Mekubbalim, ha-Shabbeta'im, ve-ha-Ḥasidim, 2 (1914), 30–34; L. Lewin, Geschichte der Juden in Lissa (1904), 190–2; L. Loewenstein, Geschichte der Juden in der Kurpfalz (1895), 198–201; N. Netter, Vingt siècles d'histoire d'une communauté juive (1938), 113–5, 132–231.

[Yehoshua Horowitz]