ḤAGIZ, JACOB

ḤAGIZ, JACOB (Israel ; 1620–1674), Jerusalem scholar. He was the son of Samuel Ḥagiz, who was rabbi of Fez, and son-in-law of Moses *Galante. During his youth he resided in various communities in Italy. In 1658 he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he headed a yeshivah founded and maintained by the Vega brothers of Leghorn, in which secular subjects and Spanish were also studied. Jacob himself, in addition to his Torah study, occupied himself with philosophy, astronomy, medicine, and grammar. He instituted several *takkanot in Jerusalem, mainly in the field of divorce procedure. In contrast to his father-in-law, Jacob was a vehement opponent of *Shabbetai Ẓevi from the beginning, being one of the first to regard him as a false messiah, and he was one of those who excommunicated him in 1665. In 1673, he went to Constantinople, in order to publish his Leḥem ha-Panim but died before achieving this.

He was also the author of Eẓ ha-Ḥayyim, a commentary to the Mishnah (Mishnayot, Leghorn, 1652–56); Halakhot Ketannot (Venice, 1704), responsa; Teḥillat Ḥokhmah, a talmudic methodology, published with the Sefer Keritot of *Samson of Chinon (Verona, 1647); Ein Yisrael, an adapted edition of the Ein Ya'akov of Jacob ibn Habib with the additions of Leone Modena (Verona, 1645); Petil Tekhelet (Venice, 1652) a commentary on the azharot of Solomon ibn Gabirol; Dinei Birkat ha-Shaḥar, Keri'at Shema u-Tefillah, laws of the morning blessings, of the reading of the shema and of the amidah (Verona, 1648); Almenara de la Luz (Leghorn, 1656), a Spanish translation of the Menorat ha-Ma'or of Isaac *Aboab.

bibliography:

Scholem, Shabbetai Ẓevi, index; M. Benayahu, in: huca, 21 (1948), 1–28 (Heb. sect.); idem, in: Sinai, 34 (1954), 172ff.; Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 61–64.

[David Tamar]