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Ḥajes, Menahem Manus

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Ḥajes, Ẓebi Hirsch B. Meïr

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Polish rabbi; died at Wilna about May, 1636. He was the son of R. Isaac b. Abraham Ḥayyut, a descendant of a pious Provençal family; his father went to Prague in 1584 (see Gans, "Ẓemaḥ Dawid," sub anno). It seems that in his younger days, about 1590, he was rabbi of Torbin, Moravia. He is the first known rabbi of Wilna, and his tombstone is the oldest in the old Jewish cemetery of that city. The Jewish community of Wilna was established in the last decade of the sixteenth century, and as Abraham Samuel BACHARACH (2) of Worms (d. 1615) congratulates Ḥayyut on his good position in a far-away place (Responsa, "Ḥut ha-Shani," No. 31) it is probable that the latter was really the first rabbi of Wilna. He is also mentioned in Ephraim Cohen's responsa "Sha'are Efrayim," No. 29, and in Moses Jekuthiel Kaufmann's "Leḥem ha-Panim" on Yoreh De'ah, the first reference indicating Ḥayyut's proficiency in geometry. His only known published work is "Zemirot le-Shabbat," or "Ḳabbalat Shabbat," which appeared in Prague (according to Zunz, "Z. G." p. 303, in Lublin) in 1621, but of which only one copy is known to exist (see Steinschneider, "Cat. Bodl." No. 6348). He was the author of an elegy on the conflagration of Posen and of one on the death of his brother Samuel, which appeared in his father's "Pene Yiẓḥaḳ" (Cracow, 1591). The Bodleian Library contains a manuscript work of his, entitled "Derek Temimim," which contains seven commentaries on the section Balaḳ of the Pentateuch and which is included in the Oppenheim collection ("Collectio Davidis," MS. No. 375, Hamburg, 1826).