Eliakim ha-Milzahgi

Eliakim Getzel ben Judah ha-Milzahgi^{[note 1]} (Hebrew: אליקים גצל בן יהודה המילזאהגי; c. 1780, Smiela – 17 July 1854, Brody), also known by the acronym Rabiyah (ראבי״ה), was a Polish-born Talmudist.

Biography

Eliakim Getzel ha-Milzahgi was born in the Polish town of Smiela into a prominent rabbinical family that included scholars Ephraim Zalman Margolioth and Jacob of Lissa.^[3] He settled in Galicia, where he studied with Kabbalist Israel Ḥarif of Satanov [he].^[3] He worked as the rabbi of a small town, and later as a teacher and merchant in Lemberg and Brody,^[3] all while pursuing Jewish scholarship under the patronage of Berish Blumenfeld.^[4]

Ha-Milzahgi wrote primarily about Talmud and Kabbalah. The only published book of his was Sefer Rabiyah (Ofen, 1837), a criticism of Leopold Zunz's Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträgeder Juden: historisch entwickelt and of Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport's biography of Eleazar ben Kalir. The work contains a critique of gematria, and a dissertation on Kabbalistic literature.^[5]

He also wrote unpublished commentaries on the Zohar, the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, and the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana.^[4] He published in the Jewish press a denunciation of the alleged forgeries of Abraham Firkovich, and, in his essay Mirkevet Esh, he argued in favour of permitting train travel on the Sabbath.^[4]

Notes

1. Milzahgi is a Hebrew derivative of Mehlsack, the German name for the author's hometown of Smiela / Samilia.^[1] He was alternatively known as Eliakim Mehlsack (אליקים מהלזק), Eliakim Samiler (אליקים סמילר), and Eliakim Smieler (אליקים סמיאלר).^[2]

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Deutsch, Gotthard (1905). "Samiler (Smieler), A. G. (Eliakim Götzel; known also as Mehlsack)". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 684.

1. Rottenberg, Dan (1986). Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-8063-1151-7. OCLC 830159130.
2.  Deutsch, Gotthard (1905). "Samiler (Smieler), A. G. (Eliakim Götzel; known also as Mehlsack)". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 684.
3. Meir, Jonatan (2018). "Haskalah and Esotericism: The Strange Case of Elyakim Getzel Hamilzahgi (1780–1854)" (PDF). Aries. 18 (2): 153–187. doi:10.1163/15700593-01802001.
4. Avneri, Zvi; Kressel, Getzel (2007). "Mehlsack, Eliakim ben Judah Ha-Milzahgi". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4.
5. Ha-Milzahgi, Elyaḳim ben Yehudah (1837). Sefer Rabiyah. Rabia (in Hebrew). Ofen: Königliche Üngarische Üniversitaets-Buchdruckerei. OCLC 27906450.