Jehiel Michael ("Michel") ben Abraham Meir of Cifer
JEHIEL MICHAEL ("Michel") BEN ABRAHAM MEIR OF CIFER
JEHIEL MICHAEL ("Michel") BEN ABRAHAM MEIR OF CIFER (d. 1844), Polish and Hungarian rabbi. After serving as rabbi in some communities of Poland, where he was born, Jehiel was appointed to Cifer near Bratislava. He was the author of ?ayyei Olam (Vienna, 1830) on talmudic topics and the Shul?an Arukh, Yoreh De'ah, and Derekh ?ayyim (Press-burg, 1837) on the laws of Passover in the Tur Ora? ?ayyim. The latter is in two parts – Derekh ha-Ka?ar, containing novellae from the responsa of the earlier authorities, and Derekh ha-Arokh, in which he ingeniously attempted to solve the difficulties raised by *David b. Samuel ha-Levi in his Turei Zahav and the Magen Avraham of Abraham Gombiner on the Shul? an Arukh and *Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. Jehiel Michael was accused of plagiarizing the Magen ha-Elef of Aryeh Leib Zunz (published in the Sar ha-Elef (Warsaw, 1817) of Jonathan *Eybeschuetz) in his Derekh ?ayyim, but his defenders point to his original contributions. In the introduction to the ?ayyei Olam, he mentions two other works that have not been published.
bibliography:
S. Wiener, Kohelet Moshe (1893–1936), 298, no. 2439; J.J.(L.) Greenwald (Grunwald), Ha-Yehudim be-Ungarya, 1 (1913), 79, no. 76; P.Z. Schwartz, Shem ha-Gedolim me-Ere? Hagar, 1 (1913), 45, no. 123; 3 (1915), 26, no. 39, 35, no. 18.
[Yehoshua Horowitz]