Bezalel Ashkenazi

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Bezalel Ashkenazi
Personal
Bornc. 1520
probably Palestine
Diedc. 1592
ReligionJudaism

Bezalel ben Abraham Ashkenazi (

talmudist who lived in Ottoman Israel during the 16th century. He is best known as the author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, a commentary on the Talmud.[a] Among his disciples were Isaac Luria and Solomon Adeni
.

Biography

Ashkenazi was one of the leading

Egypt where he received his Talmudic education from David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra and Israel de Curial. During the lifetime of his teachers, Ashkenazi was regarded as one of the highest authorities in the Orient, and counted Isaac Luria and Solomon Adeni among his pupils. In Egypt his reputation was such that he could abrogate the dignity of the nagid, which had existed for centuries and had gradually deteriorated into an arbitrary aristocratic privilege. When, in 1587, a dispute occurred in Jerusalem over the extent to which scholars not engaged in business should contribute to the taxes paid by the Jewish community to the pasha
, Ashkenazi, together with several other rabbis, took the stand that Jewish scholars, being usually impelled by love alone to emigrate to Palestine, and being scarcely able to support themselves, should be relieved from all taxes.

In the same year, Ashkenazi traveled to Palestine settling in

German Jews
, who normally did not recognize the jurisdiction of the Sephardim, and who, being largely scholars, refused to pay the Jews' tax, nevertheless recognised Ashkenazi's authority. However this arrangement between the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim seems to have been solely due to the personal influence of Ashkenazi; asvit ended immediately after his death.

Shitah Mekubezet

Ashkenazi is known principally as the author of Shitah Mekubezet (Hebrew שיטה מקובצת, Gathered Interpretation). This work, as its title indicates,[b] is a collection of glosses on the greater part of the Talmud, in the style of the Tosafot, including much original and foreign material. The great value of the Shitah lies principally in the fact that it contains numerous excerpts from Talmudic commentaries which have not otherwise been preserved.

Ashkenazi himself wrote only short marginal annotations in his edition of the Talmud. Solomon Adeni, his student, edited the annotations into the commentary to Kodashim as it exists today (both versions), including a vast quantity of original material.[1]

Shitah Mekubezet contains expositions of the Talmud taken from the works of the Spaniards

Perez
are partly contained in it.

Other works

Ashkenazi is also the author of a collection of responsa, which appeared after his death (Venice, 1595).

His Methodology of the Talmud, and his marginal notes to the

Azulai
, are preserved in manuscript at Jerusalem.

References

  1. JSTOR 24161596
    .
  1. ^ The Shita Mequbetzes to Kodashim in its modern form (both the short version in the Vilna Sha"s and the longer version published separately) was composed by Solomon Adeni, a student of Ashkenazi, whose marginal annotations were its basis. All printings inaccurately attribute the work to Ashkenazi himself.
  2. ^ This title was chosen by the Vilna printers. In Ashkenazi and Adeni's time, the work was generally known as "the glosses" or etc. Earlier printers used Asifat Zeqenim, "Collection of Elders". Adeni himself refers to it as the Binyan Shlomo l'-Chokhmas Betzalel, "Solomon's Construction of Betzalel's Wisdom", in his Melekhet Shlomo.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the

Yom-Tov Zahalon
, No. 160.

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