Oppenheim, Beer ben Isaac

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OPPENHEIM, BEER BEN ISAAC

OPPENHEIM, BEER BEN ISAAC (1760–1849), German rabbi and scholar. In his early youth Oppenheim studied at the yeshivah of Fuerth and then proceeded to Berlin where he apparently made contact with the followers of the Haskalah movement. His contributions to *Bikkurei ha-Ittim are written in an attractive Hebrew style, and he carried on correspondence with Moses Israel *Landau, Isaac Samuel *Reggio, and Solomon Judah Loeb *Rapoport. He later settled in Pressburg (Bratislava), living there in favorable financial circumstances and engaging mainly in talmudic studies. In 1829 he published Mei-Be'er, a collection of his responsa to Moses *Muenz, Samuel b. Ezekiel *Landau, Solomon Margolis, Baruch b. Josiah *Jeiteles, his brother Ḥayyim, and other contemporary scholars. It appeared with an appendum entitled Palgei Mayim, containing a number of his talmudic novellae.

bibliography:

Oppenheim, in: mgwj, 1 (1874), 63; Loewenstein, in: Gedenkbuch… D. Kaufmann (1900), 551; Ḥ.N. Dembitzer, Kelilat Yofi, 2 (1893), 58b; J.K. Duschinsky, Toledot ha-Ga'on R. David Oppenheimer (1922), 83f.

[Heinrich Flesch]