יעקב ששפורטש

Rav Yaakov ben Aharon Sasportas (5370/1610–4 Iyar 5458/1698), known in English sources as Jacob Sasportas, was a rav, mekubal and diplomat, and among the first and fiercest of those who stood against the Shabbtai Tzvi movement. He was born in Oran in Algeria to Rav Aharon, into a family of chachamim and diplomats descended from the Ramban. At eighteen he was chosen to sit as a dayan in the kehillah of Tlemcen, at twenty-four he was chosen as rav of that city, and he went on to serve the kehillot of Marrakesh, Fes and Salé. Pursued by the authorities and thrown into prison, he left North Africa and fled with his family to Amsterdam, where in 5412/1652 he printed Toledot Yaakov, an index of the pesukim brought in the aggadah of the Talmud Yerushalmi.

In 5416/1656 he was among the members of Rav Menasheh ben Yisrael’s delegation to Oliver Cromwell in London, sent to ask permission for Jews to settle in England, and some three years later the king of Morocco sent him on a diplomatic mission to the Spanish court. In 5424/1664 he was appointed rav of the Portuguese kehillah of London, but left two years later for Hamburg on account of the plague, and served there as rav until 5433/1673. He was then called to Amsterdam to head the yeshiva Keter Torah, founded by the Pinto brothers, and two years after that became a dayan and rosh yeshiva in Livorno. On his return to Amsterdam he stood at the head of the yeshiva Eitz Chaim, and after the petirah of Rav Yitzchak Aboab da Fonseca in 5453/1693 he filled his place in the rabbanut of the Sephardi kehillah, which he held to the end of his life.

When the messianic movement of Shabbtai Tzvi began to take hold of ever more souls around 5426/1666, he labored with all his strength to persuade the masses not to follow after what he called a false display, writing letters to kehillot across Europe, Asia and Africa, pressing them to unmask the deceivers and warn the people. His great work Tzitzat Novel Tzvi, in four parts, which he completed in Hamburg in 5433/1673, lays out the whole course of the events bound up with Shabbtai Tzvi; it was not printed in his lifetime, and was not printed whole until the edition prepared from manuscript by Yeshaya Tishby in 5714. An abridgement, Kitzur Tzitzat Novel Tzvi, arranged by the Yaavetz, appeared in 5497/1737 together with his teshuvot, Ohel Yaakov, brought to press by his son Avraham. He also edited the Heichal HaKodesh of Rav Moshe ben Maimon Elbaz, adding an introduction and notes.

He was niftar in Amsterdam on 4 Iyar 5458/1698 and was buried in the Portuguese cemetery Beit Chaim at Ouderkerk near Amsterdam, where his matzeivah remains whole; Rav Shlomo de Oliveira filled his place in the rabbanut of the kehillah, and his son was Rav Yitzchak Sasportas.