Gruenhut, David ben Nathan
GRUENHUT, DAVID BEN NATHAN
GRUENHUT, DAVID BEN NATHAN (17th–18th centuries), German talmudist and kabbalist. In 1682 he printed Ḥayyim Vital's Sefer ha-Gilgulim ("On the Transmigration of Souls"), but was prevented from distributing it by the rabbinate of Frankfurt, which opposed kabbalistic works because of the danger of Shabbateanism. Two years later, however, while at Heimerdingen, he published it again, this time through a Christian printer in Frankfurt. After serving as rabbi for several years in neighboring towns (Idstein, Aue, and perhaps also Heimerdingen), he returned to Frankfurt, becoming one of the scholars in the bet ha-midrash founded by David *Oppenheim. Gruenhut published Tov Ro'i (Frankfurt, 1702), Jacob *Weil's work on the laws of ritual slaughter, to which he added his Migdol David, consisting of homilies and comments on Genesis. He published the Sefer Ḥasidim of *Judah he-Ḥasid with his own commentary (Frankfurt, 1712) and in the following year Samuel *Uceda's Midrash Shemu'el (Frankfurt, 1713). On friendly terms with *Eisenmenger and *Schudt before they published their antisemitic works, he wrote an adulatory preface to the former's edition of the Bible.
bibliography:
Fuenn, Keneset, s.v.; M. Horovitz, Frankfurter Rabbinen, 2 (1883), 54–55.
[David Tamar]