Jacob Saphir - Biography

Jacob Saphir (18221886) was a Meshulach and traveler of Rumanian descent, born in Oshmyany, government of Wilna.

While still a boy he went to Palestine with his parents, who settled at Safed, and at their death in 1836 he moved to Jerusalem. In 1848, he was commissioned by the Jewish community of the latter city to travel through the southern countries to collect alms for the poor of Jerusalem. In 1854 he undertook a second tour to collect funds for the construction of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter which led him to Yemen, British India, Egypt, and Australia.

The result of this journey was his `Even Sapir (vol. i., Lyck, 1866; vol. ii., Mainz, 1874), in which work he gave the history, and a vivid though uncritical description of the condition, of the Jews in the above-mentioned countries. Saphir published also Iggeret Teman (Wilna, 1868, consciously titled after Rambam's letter of centuries earlier), a work on the appearance in Yemen of the pseudo-Messiah Judah ben Shalom, and which was largely responsible for ending Judah ben Shalom's career. Saphir died in Jerusalem in 1886.

Saphir was the first Jewish researcher to recognize the significance of the Cairo geniza, as well as the first to publicize the existence of the Midrash ha-Gadol, both later studied with great panache by Solomon Schechter.

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

• Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, pp. 557–558;
• idem, in Ha-Karmel, vi, Wilna, 1866;
• Geiger, Abraham, in Jüd. Zeit. xi.263-270.

External links

• Jewish Encyclopedia article on Jacob Saphir written by Isidore Singer & Schulim Ochser.
• Publications by Jacob Saphir
• Rabbi Jacob Levi Saphir & his Voyage to Australia