Yetziv Pithgam [Eulogy of Emden’s father, Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Aschkenazi “The Chacham Zevi”]

Emden, Jacob

(Self-published on Emden’s own press)

Altona

1740

FIRST EDITION

Vinograd, Altona 37; St. Cat. Bodl. p. 1207, no. 1; Aresheth III, pp. 261-2, no. 20.

On the second day of Rosh Chodesh Iyar, 1718, R. Zevi Hirsch Aschkenazi passed away aged 58. Emden was not present at the time of his father’s death, arriving sometime later to erect a tombstone upon his grave in Lvov. It was at the time of the “hakamath matzevah” that this eulogy was delivered. The final two leaves include a formula to be recited by the Chachham Zevi’s children every eve of Rosh Chodesh during the year of mourning and the inscription engraved upon the rabbi’s tombstone. What prompted R. Jacob Emden to publish this eulogy was the passing of his seven-year old son Zevi, a child prodigy, on 23rd Shevat 1740. According to the colophon on p. 10b, the printing was completed in precisely one week, 7th-13rd Adar. The impact made on Emden by his father is perhaps reflected in the fact that in Emden’s autobiography, Megillath Sepher, he “devotes roughly the first fifty pages, fully one quarter of the entire book, to a biography of his father.” See J.J. Schacter, “History and Memory of Self: The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden,” in: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Yerushalmi Festschrift) (1998), p. 430. See also Mortimer J. Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy (Philadelphia, 1937), pp. 41-42; Judith Bleich, “Hakham Zebi as Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic Kehillah of Amsterdam (1710-1714)” (Master’s thesis, Yeshiva University, 1965); J. J. Schacter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1988)