Kittsee, Jehiel Michael ben Samuel
KITTSEE, JEHIEL MICHAEL BEN SAMUEL
KITTSEE, JEHIEL MICHAEL BEN SAMUEL (c. 1775–1845), Hungarian talmudic scholar. His family name was originally Figdor, an abbreviation of Avigdor, the name of the founder of the family who lived in the small town of Kittsee near Pressburg, after which he came to be called. He studied under Mordecai *Banet. He was a businessman, well known for his generosity, but spent most of his time in study. His contemporary, Moses *Sofer, described him as "one of the leading notables of our community whom God has greatly blessed and filled with his bounty … despite which his preoccupation all his life has been with the Torah, business being secondary" (quoted in Shalmei Nedavah, pt. 1 (1838), 2a). Kittsee is the author of Shalmei Nedavah: part 1 (Pressburg, 1838), talmudic novellae; part 2 (ibid., 1842), novellae on the Talmud, on the Shulḥan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah and Even ha-Ezer, and aggadic sayings. Kittsee married the daughter of Mendel Jacob, known as Kopel Teven, a leader of Hungarian Jewry in the 18th century.
bibliography:
S. Mayer, Die Wiener Juden (19182), 136; J.J.(L.) Greenwald (Grunwald), Ha-Yehudim be-Ungaryah (1913), 81f.; S. Sofer (Schreiber), Iggerot Soferim, pt. 2 (1928), 88, n.2.
[Nathaniel Katzburg]