הרב גרשון אשכנזי

Rabbi Gershon Ashkenazi (c. 5378/1618 – 10 Adar II 5453/1693) was rav of Prostitz, Hanau, Nikolsburg, Vienna and Metz in the seventeenth century, and among those exiled in the expulsion from Vienna. He was born to Rabbi Yitzchak in Aulf in Germany and began while still young as a dayan in Krakow. In 5410/1650 he served as rav in Prostitz in Moravia, and about 5417 moved to the rabbanut of Hanau. In 5421, after his father-in-law Rabbi Menachem Mendel Krochmal was niftar, he succeeded him as rav of Nikolsburg and its surroundings, and a few years later took up the rabbanut of Vienna, until the expulsion of 5430. After the expulsion he moved to Metz, where he was appointed av beit din in 1670, an appointment confirmed by the French authorities the following year.

He was a talmid of the Bach, Rabbi Yoel Sirkis; of Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel, author of the Maginei Shlomo; and of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Krochmal of Nikolsburg, author of the Tzemach Tzedek. In his first marriage he married a granddaughter of the Bach, on which account he refers to the Bach in several places in Avodat HaGershuni as his father-in-law; in his second marriage he was son-in-law to his rebbi Rabbi Menachem Mendel Krochmal.

His manner of learning was sharp and closely argued, and his talmid Rabbi David Oppenheim testified of him in the introduction to Avodat HaGershuni that had Torah been forgotten from Israel he would have restored it by his pilpul. In every place he served he worked to open yeshivot and to raise up talmidim, and he was among the first to contend against the Shabbatean movement at its beginning and among the prominent Jewish leaders of Europe in his time. He wrote the teshuvot and commentary on the Torah Avodat HaGershuni and the sefer of derashot Tiferet HaGershuni. When he was niftar, the chachamim of his generation decreed that for a year no instruments be played in Jewish homes, not even at weddings. His son was Rabbi Moshe Ashkenazi of Brody, and his grandson Rabbi Aharon Holitscher, author of Beit Aharon.