Jacob Saphir | |
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| יעקב הלוי ספיר | |
 Jacob Saphir | |
| Born | 1822 |
| Died | 1886 |
| Nationality | Ottoman Palestine |
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Jacob Saphir (Hebrew:יעקב הלוי ספיר,romanized: Yankev HaLeyvy Sapir; 1822–1886), often pronouncedYaakov Sapir, was a 19th-century writer,ethnographer, researcher of Hebrew manuscripts, atraveler andemissary of the rabbis ofEastern European Jewish descent who settled inJerusalem during his early life.
Saphir was born inAshmyany in the Russian Empire (nowBelarus) and immigrated toOttoman Palestine as a child with his family in 1832. His parents, who were from thePerushim community, settled inSafed. Within a year his father died and a month later his mother died. At the age of 12, he witnessed the attack by the Arabs of the Galilee on the Jews of Safed in the lunar month ofSivan, 1834. He moved to Jerusalem in 1836.
In 1848, he was commissioned by the Jewish community of the latter city to travel through the southern countries to collect alms for the poor of Jerusalem. In 1854 he undertook a second tour to collect funds for the construction of theHurva Synagogue in theJewish Quarter, which led him in 1859 toYemen,British India,Egypt, andAustralia.
The result of this journey was his momentous ethnographic work, entitled`Even Sapir,[1] a travel diary and vignette of Jewish life and history in Yemen. Saphir published alsoIggeret Teman (Epistle to Yemen) (Wilna, 1868, consciously titled afterRambam'sletter of the same name from centuries earlier), a work on the appearance in Yemen of thepseudo-MessiahJudah ben Shalom, and which was largely responsible for ending Judah ben Shalom's career. Saphir died in Jerusalem in 1886.
Saphir was the first Jewish researcher to recognize the significance of theCairo geniza, as well as the first to publicize the existence of theMidrash ha-Gadol, both later studied with great panache bySolomon Schechter.
Sapir also did extensive research and writings onYanover,Israeli andGreeketrogs. He dedicated a collection of poetry toSir Moses andLady Montefiore.[2]
In the years 1833–1885, Saphir helped print the bookḤemdat Yamim (reprinted Jerusalem 1977) by the arch-poet of Yemen, R.Shalom Shabazi, and even added an introduction to it.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "SAPHIR, JACOB (known also as Eben Sappir)".The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.