Sandzer, ?ayyim ben Menahem
SANDZER, ?AYYIM BEN MENAHEM
SANDZER, ?AYYIM BEN MENAHEM (d. 1783), talmudist and kabbalist. ?ayyim, who was born in Sandz but should not be confused with ?ayyim *Halberstamm of Sandz, became one of the great scholars of Brody. Aside from his great talmudic scholarship, he was considered one of the outstanding kabbalists of his time. In 1744 he was counted with Ezekiel *Landau and Moses Ostrer among the kabbalists of the Klaus in Brody, the famous Galician kabbalistic center. It is related that Israel Ba'al Shem Tov said that ?ayyim's soul was a spark of the soul of *Johanan b. Zakkai, while Jacob, son of Ezekiel Landau, remarked in the preface to his father's Noda bi-Yhudah that ?ayyim was his father's teacher in Kabbalah. In 1752 he condemned Jonathan *Eybeschuetz's amulets as Shabbatean. Although an outspoken adversary of the ?asidic movement, he was highly respected in ?asidic circles.
One of his responsa appears in Noda bi-Yhudah and others in Israel *Lipschutz's Or Yisrael. Most of his novellae and responsa on the Arba'ah Turim, however, remained unpublished. Many years after his death ?ayyim's commentary on Avot, Ne'dar ba-Kodesh, was published (1862).
bibliography:
N.M. Gelber, Toledot Yehudei Brody (1955), 63, 330.
[Anthony Lincoln Lavine]