Jacob ben Naphtali

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JACOB BEN NAPHTALI

JACOB BEN NAPHTALI (17th century), Hebrew author. Born in Gnesen (Poland), Jacob was secretary (sofer) of the Jewish community of that city, which he left after the persecution of 1648. In 1652 he published in Amsterdam a collection of poems under the title Naḥalat Ya'akov Meliẓot which, besides some of his own poems (among them an elegy on the martyrs of Nemirov), contains dirges by some of his contemporaries. In 1654, Jacob was sent to Rome as an emissary to Pope Innocent x in connection with a blood libel in Poland, and was highly recommended to the Italian communities by Moses *Zacuto.

bibliography::

Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 1242, no. 5592; F. Delitzsch, Zur Geschichte der juedischen Poesie (1836), 84; Zunz, Lit Poesie, 435; Kaufmann, in: mgwj, 38 (1894), 89–96; A. Heppner and J. Herzberg, Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart… Posener Landen, 1 (1909), 407.

[Jefim (Hayyim) Schirmann]

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