Mordecai ben Naphtali Hirsch of Kremsier
MORDECAI BEN NAPHTALI HIRSCH OF KREMSIER
MORDECAI BEN NAPHTALI HIRSCH OF KREMSIER (d. c. 1670), talmudic commentator and scribe. Mordecai came from Kremsier (Kromeriz), but lived in Cracow and died there. He was the pupil and friend of Shabbetai Sheftel *Horowitz, with whom he established friendship in Posen in 1648. He was famous as a preacher and was referred to as "the chief preacher." Among his works were Ketoret ha-Mizbe'aḥ (Amsterdam, 1660), expositions of the aggadot in the tractate Berakhot, and a study of the destruction of the Temple and the length of the exile; Ketoret ha-Sammim (ibid., 1671), a commentary on the *Targum Jonathan and the Palestine Targum to the Pentateuch, to which was appended a kabbalistic commentary on Berakhot; and the elegy Shema Eli Kol Bekhi ve-Kinah (Lublin?, c. 1650, according to Steinschneider; see bibliography) on the 120,000 martyrs slain in the *Chmielnicki massacres, together with his own commentary to it.
bibliography:
Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 1671f. no. 6253; Landshuth, Ammudei, 200; Gurland, in: Oẓar ha-Sifrut, 2 (1888), 161–3 (first pagination); Davidson, Oẓar, 3 (1930), 484 no. 1656.
[Josef Horovitz]