Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz רבי יונתן אייבשיץ

His year of birth is given as either 1690 or 1694. He became a rabbi at eighteen; from 1711 he was at Prague, where he ranked second after the chief rabbi David Oppenheim; in 1741 he took the post at Metz, and in 1750 that of the triple community of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek.

His learning no one disputed, then or since. Urim veTumim on Choshen Mishpat and Kreti uPleti on Yoreh De'ah stand on the shelf of everyone who studies those sections; Ya'arot Devash, his homilies, is constantly quoted. One book only appeared in his lifetime—the rest were published after.

And yet suspicion followed him from his youth: already at Prague, in 1724, he was suspected of Sabbateanism, and because of it he did not receive the chief rabbinate there in 1736.

In 1751 Rabbi Jacob Emden, who lived at Altona, declared that the amulets Eybeschutz distributed concealed the name of Shabbetai Tzvi. What followed is in the separate article on that quarrel. Here it is enough to say the matter was never settled: the Danish inquiry came to nothing, not everyone supported the charge, and Rabbi Yechezkel Landau tried to reconcile the sides.

Modern scholarship—Yehuda Liebes, Paweł Maciejko—reads the recovered notarised copies of the amulets as Sabbatean and ascribes a Sabbatean work to Eybeschutz. In the traditional world that reading is not accepted, and his books are studied as they were. We name both sides and draw no conclusion.

He died at Altona on 21 Elul 5524 and is buried there.