Tanḥum ben Eliezer
TANḤUM BEN ELIEZER
TANḤUM BEN ELIEZER (1746–1819), Lithuanian rabbi. Tanḥum was the son of Eliezer b. Ẓevi Hirsch (d. 1791) of Orla, the author of Mahadura Kamma u-Vatra, talmudic novellae. When his father relinquished the rabbinate of Orla, Tanḥum was appointed av bet din there, and when his father was subsequently appointed rabbi in Grodno, he became av bet din in Grodno. When he failed to be appointed to succeed his father as rabbi after his death, he decided to engage in business. His signature appears first on a takkanah of 1818 in connection with the election of three delegates who were to be stationed permanently in St. Petersburg to defend Jewish rights before the czarist government.
Tanḥum left three works, the manuscripts of which were in the possession of his grandson Elijah Perez of Vilna: a kabbalistic commentary on the Pentateuch, entitled Menuḥat Emet; Menuḥat Shalom, consisting of casuistic expositions and halakhic novellae; and Neḥamat Ẓiyyon, notes on the talmud. Tanḥum's son, Issachar *Baer (1779–1855), served from 1819 until his death as dayyan of Vilna.
bibliography:
S.E. Friedenstein, Ir Gibborim (1880; repr. 1969), 54, 69–70; S.J. Fuenn, Kiryah Ne'emanah (1915), 277, n. 37; Yahadut Lita, 3 (1967), 266, 270.
[Yehoshua Horowitz]