הרב יעקב צמח

Jacob ben Hayyim Zemah was a Portuguese kabalist and physician. He received a medical training in his native country as a Marrano, but fled about 1619 to Safed and devoted himself to the Talmud and the casuists ("poseḳim") until 1625; then he went to Damascus, where for eighteen years he studied kabbalah from the Zohar and the writings of Isaac Luria and Hayyim Vital. He finally settled at Jerusalem and opened a yeshivah for the study of the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, David Conforte being for some time one of his pupils.