יצחק מבילשטיין

Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi of Beilstein, Isaac Asir HaTikvah, יצחק מבילשטיין (niftar around 5137, 1377), was a rishon of Ashkenaz, a rosh yeshiva and communal leader in the second half of the fourteenth century, in the years after the gezerot of 5109 (1349). His name points to the village of Beilstein as his place of origin. He is known by the title Asir HaTikvah, “prisoner of hope,” a phrase from Zecharyah 9:12, and he is the first sage known to have used it as a personal title.

Two medieval sources call him Gadol HaDor, the leading sage of his generation. Elchanan Reiner holds that he reached this standing in 5109–5110, after the previous Gadol HaDor, Rabbi Alexander Suslin HaKohen, author of the Sefer HaAgudah, was murdered in the riots at Erfurt, and before his own aliyah; after he left Ashkenaz, Rabbi Meir ben Baruch HaLevi held that standing.

He first headed a yeshiva in Heidelberg. Around 1350 he went up to Eretz Yisrael at the head of a group of talmidei chachamim and founded a yeshiva in Jerusalem, whose community was supported by funds from the Jewish communities of Europe. The yeshiva is mentioned in a cherem document from 1377, which also names several of his talmidim. Among his talmidim were Rabbi Shimshon ben Shmuel, called Rabbi Shimshon Ish Yerushalayim, the author of the Kitzur HaMordechai, and Rabbi Menachem Tziyoni.

The meaning of his title is debated: some see in it a hint of a mortal danger he faced and escaped, and others tie it to his aliyah and to the hope for a near redemption that his group of olim (immigrants to Eretz Yisrael) carried with them. Rabbi Yitzchak is almost never mentioned in the writings of the Ashkenazi sages of his own generation or of those that followed. Most of what is known of his life and his Torah comes from the notes of his talmid Rabbi Shimshon in his notes to the Kitzur HaMordechai, preserved in a manuscript in the National Library of Israel.

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