הרב צבי הירש אשכנזי

Rav Tzvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (c. 5418/1658–1 Iyar 5478/1718), known to all generations as the Chacham Tzvi after his responsa, was among the most important poskim of his era, and one of its most fiercely independent spirits. Born in Moravia to Rav Yaakov and to Nechama, daughter of Rav Efraim HaKohen, author of the Shaar Efraim, he learned under his grandfather in Ofen and then in Salonika under Rav Eliyahu Kovo, where he absorbed the Sephardi derech halimud — and where the Sephardim gave the young Ashkenazi gaon the title Chacham, which he carried all his life. His learning wove the two traditions together.

His life was a chain of wanderings shaped by tragedy and principle. In the siege of Ofen in 1686 a cannon shot killed his young wife and daughter; he fled to Sarajevo, where he served as rav, and later married Sarah, daughter of Rav Meshulam Zalman Neumark, rav of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. In Altona he headed the famed Kloyz for eighteen years, living on a pittance, until he was chosen rav of the three kehillot — a tenure ended by the storm over his famous psak in the case of the chicken found without a heart. In 5470/1710 he became rav of the Ashkenazi kehillah of Amsterdam, accepting the position only on condition of absolute independence, and renouncing its perquisites to preserve it; there he printed the She’eilot u’Teshuvos Chacham Tzvi.

Stories from the life of the Chacham Tzvi are told by his son, Rav Yaakov Emden, in his autobiography, Megilat Hasefer.

Having seen the devastation of the Sabbatean movement in Salonika in his youth, he fought it without compromise all his life. When the Sabbatean Nechemiah Chiya Chayun sought patronage in Amsterdam, the Chacham Tzvi — with Rav Moshe Chagiz at his side — placed him under cherem, a war that cost him his position: he left Amsterdam, was received with honor by the Sephardim of London, and wandered through the kehillot of Ashkenaz and Poland until Lvov took him as its rav in the winter of 5478. He was niftar there a few months later. Of his sixteen children, his son Rav Yaakov Emden became one of the great fighters of the following generation, and his daughter Miriam was the mother of Rav Shaul Lowenstam of Amsterdam.