JACOB BEN BENJAMIN ZE'EV

JACOB BEN BENJAMIN ZE'EV (also Zak ; 17^th century), talmudist, father of Ẓevi Hirsch *Ashkenazi (the "Ḥakham Ẓevi"). By his first marriage he was a son-in-law of Ephraim b. Jacob ha-Kohen, and by a second, of Naphtali *Kohen. He studied under Jacob of Lublin. He taught in Vilna, but he fled at the time of the Cossack uprising of 1655. He was missing for a long time and was presumed dead, but finally he reached Trebitsch (Trebic), Moravia. He was appointed rabbi of Ungarisch-Brod (Uhersky Brod) and later succeeded his father-in-law, Ephraim b. Jacob, in Budapest, where he headed a yeshivah. His pupils included David *Oppenheim. According to an opinion which has, however, been disputed, Jacob was for a time an adherent of Shabbetai ẓevi. When Budapest was taken by storm by the Austrians in 1686, Jacob and his wife were taken by the Brandenburg army to Berlin as prisoners of war and were ransomed there. After a short stay in Altona, where his son was rabbi, he moved to Ereẓ Israel and died in Jerusalem at the age of 73.

bibliography:

J. Emden, Megillat Sefer, ed. by D. Kahana (1897), 3–7; J. Schwarz, Tevu'ot ha-Areẓ, ed. by A.M. Luncz (1900), 459f.; H.A. Wagenaar, Toledot Ya'veẓ (1868), 1; Fuenn, Keneset, 547; idem, Kiryah Ne'emanah (1915²), 91f.; S. Büchler, A zsidók története Budapesten (1901), 148, 155, 177; D. Kaufmann, Die Erstuermung Ofens (1895), 17, 26f., 53ff.; J.J.(L.) Greenwald (Grunwald), Toledot Ḥakhmei Yisrael (1924), 3, 5, 9, 22; Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 78–82, 152; D. Kahana, Toledot ha-Mekubbalim ha-Shabbeta'im ve-ha-Ḥasidim, 1 (1913), 90.

[Samuel Abba Horodezky]