ISAAC BAR DORBELO

ISAAC BAR DORBELO (12^th century), one of the best-known pupils of Jacob *Tam. Isaac transmitted details of the various personal practices of Jacob Tam and other scholars, incorporating them in the *Maḥzor Vitry, which he apparently edited. The book describes the conduct and the teachings of *Rashi and his school (" de-Vei Rashi ") and there is no doubt that Isaac's share in it amounted to much more than the passages quoted in his name. Many of his "additions" do not bear his name at all but are simply signed with the letter tav (tosefet, "addition"). Isaac traveled extensively in France, Germany (Maḥzor Vitry, ed. S. Hurwitz (1923), 388), Russia, and Bohemia, where he met *Isaac b. Jacob ha-Lavan (ibid., 243). He also visited Worms where he saw the text of the two queries sent by the Rhenish scholars to Ereẓ Israel – one on the subject of the Messiah, and the other concerning the question of the ritual implications of a cardiac adhesion of the lung in an animal – as well as the replies received. This is the oldest extant German-Jewish document of its kind.

The origin of the name Dorbelo is not certain. It may indicate that his father came from the town Ourville in northern France, but Isaac is not to be identified with the scholar Isaac of Ourville – author of the Sefer ha-Menahel, an abridgment of which is included in the ritual compendium *Kol Bo. It is quite possible that Dorbelo is a personal name, a person of this name appearing in the list of the martyrs of Mainz of 1096 (cf. also responsa of Meir b. Baruch, ed. Prague (1608), no. 501). It may be that both of these are identical with the scholar of this name to whom Rashi addressed a responsum in deferential terms, or that Isaac is his son.

bibliography:

S.H. Kook, Iyyunim u-Meḥkarim, 1 (1959), 292–7; Perles, in: Jubelschrift… Graetz (1887), 31–2.

[Israel Moses Ta-Shma]