נתן נטע הנובר

Rav Nosson Nota Hannover (d. 20 Tammuz 5443/1683) was a rav, mekubal, darshan and the chronicler of his generation’s churban — author of Yeven Metzulah, the classic Jewish account of the gezeirot of tach v’tat. Born in Ostroh, the son of Rav Moshe, who was murdered in those same gezeirot, he was living in Zaslav in Volhynia when the Cossack storm broke in 5408/1648, and fled with its Jews — a flight he would set down for all generations. For years he wandered Europe as a darshan, and in Venice learned the hidden wisdom from Rav Chaim HaKohen of Aleppo, the talmid of Rav Chaim Vital, and from Rav Moshe Zacuto and Rav Shmuel Aboab.

Yeven Metzulah Abyss of Despair (Venice, 5413/1653) recounts the uprising of Chmielnicki and the destruction of the kehillot of Ukraine and Poland — among them the deaths al kiddush Hashem of Rav Yechiel Michel, the kadosh of Nemirov, and of Rav Shimshon of Ostropoli — together with a luminous picture of the Torah world of Poland before the churban, its yeshivot and its order of learning. Written with a historian’s eye and a mourner’s heart, it was translated into many languages and fixed those years in the memory of klal Yisrael. His Shaarei Tzion (Prague, 5422/1662), a collection of tikkunim and tefillot drawn from the wisdom of the mekubalim, became one of the most beloved and reprinted tefillah books in all the tefutzot; he also wrote Ta’amei Sukkah and the four-language dictionary Safah Berurah.

He served as rav of Iasi in Moldova — where he built the city’s first stone shul — and later of Focsani and of Uhersky Brod in Moravia. There his wanderings ended as his chronicle had begun: when raiders fell upon the town on 20 Tammuz 5443, he was killed al kiddush Hashem with his kehillah.