Sandzer, Ḥayyim ben Menahem
SANDZER, ḤAYYIM BEN MENAHEM
SANDZER, ḤAYYIM BEN MENAHEM (d. 1783), talmudist and kabbalist. Ḥayyim, who was born in Sandz but should not be confused with Ḥayyim *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 Ḥayyim'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 Ḥayyim was his father's teacher in Kabbalah. In 1752 he condemned Jonathan *Eybeschuetz's amulets as Shabbatean. Although an outspoken adversary of the ḥasidic movement, he was highly respected in ḥasidic 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 Most of his novellae and responsa on the Arba'ah Turim, however, remained unpublished.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 Ḥayyim's commentary on Avot, Ne'dar ba-Kodesh, was published (1862).
bibliography:
N.M. Gelber, Toledot Yehudei Brody (1955), 63, 330.
[Anthony Lincoln Lavine]