(c.1660-1718). Rabbi and halakhic scholar known as "Ḥakham Tsevi." Educated by his father and maternal grandfather, both of whom had escaped from Vilna to Hungary during the Cossack rebellion, Ashkenazi wrote his first responsum at the age of 16. He then studied for three years (1676-9) in Salonika and Belgrade, learning Sephardi customs and procedures (a number of which he adopted). The Sephardim honored him as ḥakham (sage), a title which he decided to adopt together with the surname Ashkenazi. After his return to Buda, the Hungarian capital, Ashkenazi was dogged by misfortune. His wife and child were killed during the Austrian siege of Buda in 1686, he himself managed to take refuge in Sarajevo (where he was appointed ḥakham), and not until three years later did he discover that his parents had survived and been ransomed by the Jews of Berlin. His second wife, Sarah, was the daughter of R. Meshullam Zalman Neumark-Mirels, who headed the rabbinical court of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck. Settling in Altona, he taught there until 1707, when he succeeded his late father-in-law as rabbi of Hamburg and Wandsbeck. He resigned after only two years, however, as the result of a halakhic controversy.
In 1710, Ḥakham Tsevi was elected chief rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam. His collection of Responsa, printed there in 1712, met with warm praise from the city's Portuguese rabbis. New troubles arose, however, when Nehemiah Ḥayon, a follower of the arch-heretic Shabbetai Tsevi, arrived in Amsterdam to seek help from the Portuguese community in distributing his own writings (1713). The Sephardi elders feared that their own rabbi, Solomon Ayllon, had Shabbatean sympathies and therefore asked Ḥakham Tsevi Ashkenazi to issue a ruling. Ḥakham Tsevi decided against Ḥayon, banned his publications, and excommunicated him. Infuriated that he had not been consulted, Ayllon then changed the original conflict into one of Sephardi prestige vis-à-vis the Ashkenazim. The commission which he headed dismissed all charges against Ḥayon; subjected to abusive attacks, Ashkenazi resigned his post in 1714. After visits to London and Emden, he left for Poland and early in 1718 became rabbi of Lemberg (Lwow), where he died four months later.
The volume of responsa entitled Ḥakham Tsevi was his major halakhic work. It reflects the author's wandering life and sad experiences, also dealing with unusual questions---such as the alleged Spinozism of David Nieto (the ḥakham of London) or whether a Golem may be counted in a prayer quorum (Minyan).
