Creator Bio
Jonathan Eybeschütz
ca. 1694–1764
Born in Kraków into a rabbinic family that settled in Moravia, Jonathan (Yonatan) Eybeschütz was regarded as a prodigy who wrote monumental works of rabbinic scholarship. He served as rabbi and head of a yeshiva in Prague from around 1711 to 1715, taking positions on religious matters that brought him into conflict with the city’s powerful chief rabbi, David Oppenheim. In 1741, Eybeschütz moved to Metz, France, and eight years later to the triple community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, assuming the position of chief rabbi. After some amulets he had written fell into the hands of Jacob Emden, a controversy erupted when Emden accused him of being a secret adherent of Sabbateanism. The controversy continued for two decades. Eybeschütz wrote numerous rabbinic works, including collections of sermons.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Sermon of Ethical Rebuke Preached . . . during the Penitential Period Preceding the New Year’s Day, 5505 [1744], to the Congregation of Metz
The prophet Hosea cried out: Come, let us turn back to the Lord; He attacked, and He can heal us; He wounded, and He can bind us up. In two days He will make us whole again; on the third day He will…
Primary Source
Sefer luḥot edut (Tablets of Testimony)
For it is not against me that these men have sinned, for what am I and what is my life? My days have passed like a transient shadow, and fly away as does a dream—like a dream upon…
Primary Source
Urim ve-tumim (The Urim and Thummim)
This preface represents not a collated anthology but is rather the result of forgetfulness on my part, insofar as I have been terse in the words I have written, which place on record that…
Primary Source
Tiferet Yonatan (The Splendor of Jonathan)
This is what the episode of the Generation of the Dispersion was all about; that they were afraid of a Flood and accordingly sought to erect a tower up to the heavens. One has, however, to understand…
Primary Source
Ya‘arot devash (Honeycombs)
The Meaning of the Sukkah: Exile, for the Whole World Is Only a…
Primary Source
Sefer meyrav (Book of Abundance)
Now the daughter of the King of the Kittim, on hearing this, became highly enraged, and she said, “Is there any room to defend the cause of these people who were lacking in wisdom and set down a…
Related Guide
Rabbinic Scholarship, 1750–1880
Despite the challenges to the status of rabbinic scholarship beginning in the early modern period, it flourished with figures of coruscating brilliance in Central and Eastern Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century.