Biography
Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann ben Shlomo Mühlhausen (יום טוב ליפמן מילהויזן), also called Tavyomi, was a rishon of Ashkenaz, a rav and posek at the very end of the period of the rishonim, in the early fifteenth century. He was a talmid chacham in halacha, a mekubal (master of kabbalah) and a student of philosophy, and his work reached the communities of Bohemia, Poland, Austria and Germany. He is best known for Sefer Nitzachon, written in the dispute with Christianity; Stephan Bodecker, Bishop of Brandenburg, wrote a reply to it.
His father was Rabbi Shlomo Mühlhausen; where and when he was born is not known. He most likely learned under Rabbi Meir ben Baruch HaLevi of Vienna, under Rabbi Shimshon ben Eliezer, author of Baruch She’amar, and under Rabbi Shalom of Neustadt. Yom Tov was his Hebrew name, and Lipmann the everyday Ashkenazi name that went with it.
He served as rav in Prague. In the opening pages of his siddur, Rabbi Naftali Hertz Treves names him Lipmann Mühlhausen of Prague and places his home in the Wyschigrod quarter of the city, and a document he signed as dayan in Prague in 1413 survives. He was a friend of the Maharil and of the Mahari Weil, and some of his rulings are brought in their writings. With his colleagues Rabbi Menachem ben Yaakov Shalem and Rabbi Avigdor Kara he studied philosophy and debated with the Christians. He traveled through Bohemia and the Rhineland, was most likely in Krakow in 1420, and at the end of his life served as rav in Erfurt. He was niftar around 1421.
His Sefer Alpha Beta explains the shapes of the letters and their meaning according to kabbalah; part of it he learned from Rabbi Shimshon ben Eliezer. It was printed inside Baruch She’amar, a sefer on the halachot of making and writing tefillin that joins three works by different authors, and this led to confusion over who wrote it. Rabbi Yosef Karo quotes Alpha Beta in the Beit Yosef (Orach Chaim 36) and, by mistake, names its author “Rabbi Yitzchak Baruch She’amar”.
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רבי יום טוב ליפמן מילהויזן היה רב ופוסק הלכה אשכנזי בסוף תקופת הראשונים, נודע בשל ספרו "ספר נצחון".
Yom-Tov Lipmann ben Solomon Mühlhausen was a controversial Talmudist, Kabbalist and Jewish philosopher of the 14th and 15th centuries. His religious and scholarly career and influence spanned the Jewish communities of Bohemia, Poland, Austria and various parts of Germany, and his dispute with the principles of Christianity left a lasting imprint on the relations between Christianity and Judaism.
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