Rabbi Saul Loewenstamm רבי שאול לוונשטם
Ashkenazi rabbi of Amsterdam, author of the Binyan Ariel
He was born in Rzeszow, where his father Rabbi Aryeh Leib was the rabbi, and passed through the posts usual for a rabbi of that time: Lokachi, then Dubno, where he took the place of his father in law, and at last Amsterdam. His father by then headed the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam, and after his death in 1755 the son took the post; he held it to the end, for thirty five years.
Amsterdam was a city of two communities: the Portuguese one, grown out of the anusim, with its Esnoga, and the Ashkenazi one, come from the east of Europe. Rabbi Saul stood at the head of the second. His care was the beit midrash founded by his father: the community managed to put up a new building for it, opened on 22 June 1778. In the same year the Binyan Ariel appeared, in three parts: on the Pentateuch, on the five Scrolls and on particular talmudic passages. He printed other things as well: notes on tractate Niddah, on the Shulchan Aruch and on the Mishnah, and a halakhic ruling on Dutch cheeses.
After him the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam was taken by his son, Rabbi Jacob Moses.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Binyan Ariel, Amsterdam, 1778 — the make up of the book: expositions of the Pentateuch, the five Scrolls and talmudic passages
Scholarship
- Loewenstamm, Saul, article in the Jewish Encyclopedia — his dates, the posts he held, the opening day of the new beit midrash and the succession of his son
Basis: documents and evidence.