Chief Rabbi, Book Collector, and Businessman (Part 1)
The Life and Works of Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim (1664-1736)
Early Years in Worms
Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim was born in Worms, Germany in 1664 to Rabbi Avraham and Blümele Oppenheim. Rabbi Avraham Oppenheim was a successful investor and trader who owned real estate both in Worms and beyond. As a man of means, Rabbi Avraham hired a private tutor to teach his son Gemara. This tutor may have been none other than the eminent rabbi of Worms, Rabbi Yair Chaim Bacharach (1639-1702) who was a relative of the Oppenheim family.
After studying locally in Worms for a number of years, Rabbi Oppenheim travelled across Europe to study under some of the greatest rabbinic figures of the generation including Rabbi Gershon Ulif Ashkenazi (1618-93) in Metz (known for his responsa Avodas ha-Gershuni), Rabbi Wolff Epstein in Freidberg, Rabbi Yakov Ashkenazi in Budapest (father of Chacham Tzvi Ashkenazi), and Rabbi Yitzchak Wolff Lipmann in Landsburg (author of Nachlas Binyamin on the taryag mitzvos).
Marriage to Genendel of Hanover
In 1681, at the age of eighteen, Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim married Genendel, a daughter of the prosperous and influential philanthropist and Court Jew Leffmann Behrens of Hanover (also known as Eliezer Lipmann Cohen).
Already prior to his marriage, Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim was considered a well-connected rabbi; his uncle, Shmuel Oppenheim, was a successful banker and one of Europe’s most affluent and influential Jews. Thus, Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim’s marriage into the Behrens family of Hanover further expanded his network of connections to influential government officials.
Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim recognized his unique position and utilized these two contacts to aid his fellow Jews in need. Often, the Court Jews themselves were inaccessible to the public and Rabbi Oppenheim served as an intermediary between the two.
The Rabbinate in Nikolsburg
Considering his superb Torah education and ability to master the Talmud and poskim, it is no surprise that as a young rabbi in his early twenties, Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim’s name was well recognized amongst the prominent Torah scholars and rabbinic figures of western and central Europe. Thus in 1689, the twenty-five-year-old Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim was appointed rabbi in Nikolsburg, Moravia, a position which he held for over a decade. The rabbinate of Nikolsburg was a highly prestigious position previously occupied by towering rabbinic figures including: the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Krochmal (a student of Rabbi Yoel Sirkis and author of Tzemach Tzedek).
With the exception of occasional trips to the capital of the Hapsburg Empire in Vienna to negotiate matters pertaining to Moravian Jewry, visits to his family in Hanover, and periodic travels to purchase books and manuscripts for his world class library (which will be featured in a forthcoming post), Rabbi Oppenheim spent the majority of his time in Nikolsburg where he headed the yeshiva and taught Torah to its many students.
Since Hebrew printing was banned in Moravia from 1605-1750, Rabbi Oppenheim was tasked with the difficult job of supplying copies of the Talmud and other sefarim for the yeshivos across Moravia.
A product of Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim’s decade long interactions with his students in the yeshiva of Nikolsburg are his chiddushim on the entire Talmud which he makes reference to in his introduction to Moed Dovid. Unfortunately, Rabbi Oppenheim never managed to find the time to organize and print these chiddushim and the majority of them were lost.
The Great Turkish War
In the summer months of 1683, Vienna (the capital of the Hapsburg Empire) was invaded by Ottoman forces. Although the Turkish conquest failed, it marked the beginning of the Great Turkish War (1683-1699) which consisted of a series of military struggles between the Ottoman Empire in the east and the Hapsburg Empire in the west. In 1686, Emperor Leopold I of the Hapsburg Empire led an attack to recapture Budapest which had been under Turkish control for one-hundred and forty-five years since it was conquered by the Turks in 1541.
Many Jews were forced to flee Vienna and its suburbs during the war years and found refuge in Nikolsburg.
It was under these difficult circumstances that the twenty-five-year-old Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim arrived in Nikolsburg in 1689 to serve as its rabbi. He was immediately faced with a large number of complex halachic questions, specifically regarding the status of agunos.
Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim’s devotion and love for the Jews of Moravia led to an unprecedented decision by the Va’ad Medinas Mehrin. When the council convened in Broda in the winter of 1701, Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim was proclaimed the permanent Landesrabbiner of Moravia. Such an appointment was considered exceptional because a normal term of the Landesrabbiner was just three years.
To be continued…