Autograph Manuscript Signed. With wax seal containing the name Yehonathan Eybeschuetz in Hebrew within a cartouche, with initials underneath, surrounded by a garland

EYBESCHEUTZ, JONATHAN

Altona/Hamburg/Wandsbek

10th Nissan, 1755

AN UNRECORDED ENGAGEMENT PROPOSAL OF R. JONATHAN EYBESCHEUTZ'S DAUGHTER, NISSEL. A child prodigy who studied in the Yeshiva of the Gaon Rabbi Meir Eisenstadt (author of Panim Meiroth), R. Yonassan Eybescheutz (1690 -1764) was a brilliant Talmudist, Halachist, and Kabbalist, holding positions as Dayan of Prague and later as Rabbi of the "Three Communities": Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek. Despite controversy that followed him, he was a man of enormous erudition with a magnetic personality. Few Rabbinic leaders of the period so profoundly impressed their mark on Jewish life. This exceptionally rare autograph document is a power of attorney empowering R. Yonassan Eybescheutz's son R. Michel, to act on his behalf in all matters pertaining to the betrothal of his daughter Nissel to Anshel, the son of the late R. Samuel Ginz. R. Yonassan states that whatever is agreed upon in the betrothal arrangements are to be thoroughly binding, as if he himself wrote the terms and thus cannot be altered under any circumstances. It should be noted that this marriage proposal was apparently never finalized, for indeed Nissel (1741-93) was married four years later in 1759, at the age of eighteen, to Raphael Gad in Breslau (see B. Brilling, "Eibenschutziana," in: HUCA, Vol. 35 (1964), pp. 255-73)