Marcus Benedict

Mordecai ben Abraham Benet (Hebrew: מרדכי בן אברהם בנט‎‎, also Marcus Benedict; 1753–1829) was a Talmudist and chief rabbi of Moravia born at Csurgó, a small village in the county of Stuhlweissenburg, Hungary.

As Benet's parents were very poor and consequently unable to engage a teacher, they sent their son when only 5 years old to his grandmother at Nikolsburg. There Gabriel Markbreiter provided for the tuition of the gifted child for a period of 6 years, and then sent him to Ettingen, Alsace, the rabbi of which place was Markbreiter's brother-in-law. The latter became Benet's teacher, and took great delight in his pupil's wonderful development. At Benet's barmitzva (religious majority) celebration his teacher showed the guests, to their great astonishment, three of the boy's manuscripts—a commentary on the Pentateuch, a commentary on the Passover Haggadah, and novellæ on the Talmud.

From his thirteenth to his 15-year Benet devoted himself exclusively to the study of the Bible, with the aid of the Jewish commentaries and of the Haggadah in Talmud and Midrash; his strictly halakhic studies he completed later in the yeshiva of Rabbi Joseph Steinhardt at Fürth, where he remained three years. He then went as a "ḥaber" (senior student) to Prague, where Meïr Karpeles started a private "klaus" for him; though Ezekiel Landau (Noda bihudah) conducted a large yeshiva in the same city, a number of able Talmudists came daily to hear Benet's discourses. After staying at Prague 2 years he married Sarah Finkel (died 1828), the daughter of a prominent well-to-do citizen of Nikolsburg. Here he settled in 1773, and within a year was made ab bet din (ecclesiastical assessor).

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