Moses Ḥagiz

Moses Hagiz (1671 – ca. 1750) (Hebrew: משה חגיז) was a Talmudic scholar, rabbi, kabbalist, and author born in Jerusalem, Palestine. He was one of the most prominent and influential Jewish leaders in 17th-century Amsterdam. During Hagiz's lifetime there was an overall decline in rabbinic authority which was the result of migration and assimilation, and Hagiz devoted his career to restoring rabbinic authority. His most prominent talent was as a polemicist, and he campaigned ceaselessly against Jewish heresy in an attempt to unify the rabbinate.

His father, Jacob Hagiz, died while Moses was still a child. The latter was therefore educated by his maternal grandfather, Moses Galante (the Younger), who had succeeded his son-in-law. With the death of Moses Galante (1689) support from Livorno was withdrawn, and Hagiz found himself in very straitened circumstances. He went to Safed to collect a claim which his mother had against the congregation, but succeeded only in making bitter enemies, who later persecuted him.

Returning to Jerusalem, he was given letters of recommendation nominating him as a rabbinical emissary or shadar sent to obtain support for a bet ha-midrash (study hall) which he intended to establish. At Rashid (Rosetta), Abraham Nathan gave him 30,000 thalers to deposit at Livorno for this purpose. Arriving at Livorno, he secured from Vega, the protector of his family, a promise of further support; but his Palestinian enemies slandered him and ruined his prospects. He subsequently wandered through Italy, and edited at Venice (1704) the Halakot Ketannot of his father. Somewhat later he went to Amsterdam, where he supported himself by teaching, and occupied himself with the publication of his works. In Amsterdam he made the acquaintance of Tzvi Ashkenazi, then rabbi of the Ashkenazic congregation, and assisted him in unmasking the impostor Nehemiah Hayyun. This step, however, made more enemies for him, and, like Tzvi Ashkenazi, he had to leave the city (1714).

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