TEMERLS, JACOB BEN ELIEZER

TEMERLS, JACOB BEN ELIEZER (also known as Jacob Ashkenazi ; d. 1666), rabbi and kabbalist. Temerls was born in Worms, but in his youth went to Poland. He taught in Lublin, but later moved to Kremenets, where he resided for the greater part of his life. He spent his last years in Vienna, where he died. He was greatly revered as an outstanding talmudist and kabbalist; some of Europe's leading rabbis turned to him for advice. It was said of him that "he did not leave the house of study but engaged in the study of the Torah in purity, fasting daily for 40 years."

He was the author of a short kabbalistic commentary on the Pentateuch, Sifra di-Ẓeni'uta de-Ya'akov (published by his son Eliezer Lipmann, Amsterdam, 1669). Eliezer Lipmann, who added to the volume rules for the study of the Kabbalah, expressed the hope that it would be vouchsafed him to publish also his father's other writings, which included a larger commentary on the Pentateuch and the Five Scrolls, a commentary on the expositions of passages in the Prophets and the Hagiographa, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, and the Zohar, including the Idrot, as well as commentaries to the works of Isaac Luria. However, none of these was published; nor was a collection of his responsa, mentioned by Aaron Samuel *Koidanover in Emunat Shemu'el (Frankfurt, 1683). An approbation by Temerls, written in 1660, appears in Ḥayyim Bochner's Or Ḥadash (Amsterdam, 1771 or 1775).

bibliography:

H.N. Dembitzer, Kelilat Yofi, 2 (1893), 117a–125a; B. Wachstein, Die Inschriften des alten Judenfriedhofes in Wien, 1 (1912), 462–5.

[Tovia Preschel]