Jacob Saphir

Jacob Saphir (* 1822 in Aschmjany, † 1886 in Jerusalem, Hebrew יעקב הלוי ספיר, also Yaakov Sapir ) was a rabbi ( rabbinical emissary - Meshulach ) and traveler of Rumanian origin.

At a young age he went with his parents to Palestine, where they settled in Safed; after her death in 1836, he went to Jerusalem. In 1848 he was commissioned by the Jewish community of the city, to travel through the southern countries for alms for the poor of Jerusalem to collect. In 1854 he undertook a second journey to raise funds for the construction of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem to collect; the journey took him to Yemen (1861 ), British India, Indonesia, Egypt and Australia. In Yemen, he founded several Jewish settlements.

The result of this trip he gave in his work Even Sapir ( Iben Safir ) again. Sapphire also published the book Iggeret Teman (Vilnius 1868, deliberately named after the letter Maimonides to the Jews in Yemen centuries earlier ), a work on the emergence of the alleged Messiah Judah ben Shalom in Yemen, which ultimately ben also for the end Shalom's career responsible had. Sapphire died in 1886 (according to other sources 1885 or 1888) in Jerusalem.

Jacob Saphir was the first Jewish researcher who recognized the significance of the Cairo Geniza, and the first who made known the existence of Midrash ha - gadol ( a medieval collection of rabbinic texts); both were later studied extensively by Solomon Schechter.

According to his book of Moshav Even Sapir is named on the outskirts of Jerusalem.