מיכאל זקס

Rav Yechiel Michel Sachs (5568/1808–24 Shevat 5624/1864), known in German and English sources as Michael Sachs, served as dayan and darshan in Berlin and was a scholar of the Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages. He was born in Glogau to Leib Yitzchak — also called Hirsch Levin — a cloth merchant, and his wife Sarah. In the town’s yeshiva he learned Tanach, Hebrew and Gemara from Rav Yaakov Yosef Ettlinger, and from the age of thirteen he also sat in the local gymnasium, where his gift for Greek and Latin drew notice; he finished there at eighteen. In 5587/1827 he entered the university in Berlin and took up classical philology, philosophy, history, Hebrew, Syriac and the languages of the East, and in 5595/1835 he passed the examinations qualifying him to teach, receiving a doctorate that same year. He was among the earliest Jews to graduate from a modern university.

In 5596/1836 he was appointed rav of the Sephardic beit knesset in Prague, and in 5604/1844 he was called to Berlin. There he stood against the changes the reformers pressed upon the order of tefillah, above all the organ and prayers in German, while agreeing to certain lighter adjustments — a middle path that drew opposition from both directions. When the Prussian government took up the question of Jewish emancipation in 1847, one of the legislators sought his view; Rav Sachs answered plainly that the Jews do await the coming of Mashiach and the return to Tzion.

He was among the foremost darshanim of his generation and printed two volumes of his derashot. Together with Leopold Zunz he worked on a new German rendering of Tanach, and he issued a German translation of the machzor for the Yamim Tovim as well as studies and translations of the poetry of Sefarad. His Be’er Michel, a short commentary on passages in the piyutim, appeared in Berlin in 5627/1867, and his glosses on the Yerushalmi on Shabbat were published afterward. He was niftar in Berlin on the night of 24 Shevat 5624 at the age of fifty-five, and more than three thousand people accompanied him.