HOROWITZ, SAUL ḤAYYIM BEN ABRAHAM HA-LEVI

HOROWITZ, SAUL ḤAYYIM BEN ABRAHAM HA-LEVI (1828–1915), Jerusalem rabbi. Horowitz was born in Vilna where his father was rabbi. He married the daughter of David Tevele b. Nathan of Minsk. From 1865 he was rabbi of Dubrovno, whence the name "the Dubrovno rabbi," by which he was known. He made himself responsible for many of his pupils' material needs, a burden which caused him great anxiety. In 1883 he moved to Ereẓ Israel and settled in Jerusalem, where he served as rabbi of the Me'ah She'arim quarter. In 1885 he founded there a talmud torah called Peri Eẓ Ḥayyim and the large yeshivah Me'ah She'arim. The bet midrash was also designed "for the purpose of giving instruction to business men and laymen of Me'ah She'arim and its vicinity." In his introduction to the book of regulations of the Peri Eẓ Ḥayyim talmud torah society (1885), he states that on coming to Jerusalem he felt the lack of a general fund for facilitating instruction to the children of the poor and founded the society to meet that need from the funds of which the salaries of teachers would be paid (p. 5). He was closely associated with the Orthodox group founded by Joshua Leib *Diskin and served as head of the sheḥitah committee established by him. During World War i he was imprisoned for a time by the Turkish authorities, together with his nephew Joseph Gershon Horowitz, on the charge of distributing lottery tickets for a plot of land in Ḥaderah. Among his publications were Kelilat Sha'ul (1879), a methodology of 310 talmudic topics with a commentary entitled Mekor Ḥayyim: Miẓpeh Sha'ul; a pamphlet appended to part two of the Naḥalat David (1882) of David Tevele of Minsk, containing six of his sermons; Yad Sha'ul (published together with part one of Naḥalot David (1864) by David Tevele); and Peri Eẓ Ḥayyim, an appendix to Tevele's Beit David (1904), containing his novellae.

bibliography:

J.G. Horowitz, in: P. Grajewsky, Bi-She'arayikh Yerushalayim, no. 3 (1937); J.J. Rivlin, Me'ah She'arim (1947), 89f., 190f.; J.A. Weiss, Bi-She'arayikh Yerushalayim (1949), 261 no. 1; Tidhar, 8 (1957), 3099.

[Yehoshua Horowitz]