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

Emden, Jacob

By the Author

Altona

1740

FIRST EDITION. Owner's signature on title and f.3r. “Itzak Yaakov ben shel ha-meyaldoth” (Isaac Jacob son of the midwives)

Vinograd, Altona 37; Aresheth III, pp. 261-2, no. 20.

On the second day of Rosh Chodesh Iyar, 1718, Tzvi Hirsch Aschkenazi passed away aged 58. Emden was not present at the time of his father’s death, arriving some time later to erect a tombstone upon his grave in Lvov. It was at the time of this “hakamath matzevah” that this eulogy was delivered. The final two leaves include the inscription engraved upon the rabbi’s tombstone, as well as a formula to be recited by the Chachham Tzvi’s children every eve of Rosh Chodesh during the year of mourning. What prompted R. Jacob Emden to publish this eulogy was the passing of his seven-year old son Tzvi, 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 by 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.” 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