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David Oppenheim

David Oppenheim

1664 CE–1736 CE · Acharonim · Worms (Rhineland)

Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664–1736) was chief rabbi of Nikolsburg and then of Prague, and one of the most powerful Talmudic authorities of his generation. He is equally renowned for assembling the greatest private library of Hebrew books and manuscripts of his age — some 7,000 volumes — which today forms a cornerstone of Oxford's Bodleian Library. A senior arbiter whose approval was sought across Europe, he stood at the center of rabbinic authority during the era's bitter struggles over Sabbateanism.

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Stop 1 of 31664–1691Born

Worms (Rhineland)וורמייזאRhineland, Germany

What they did here

Born in Worms into a distinguished rabbinic family.

About Worms (Rhineland)

Worms, on the left bank of the Rhine in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, grew from the Celtic settlement of Borbetomagus into a Roman town and a major medieval city. Its Jewish community, established by the late tenth century with a synagogue first built in 1034, was one of the three ShUM communities of the Rhineland, whose sites UNESCO inscribed as World Heritage in 2021; Rashi studied at its yeshiva in the 1060s, and the city remained a seat of rabbinic learning for centuries. In Christian history Worms gave its name to the Concordat of 1122 and to the Diet of 1521, at which Martin Luther was declared a heretic, and William Tyndale's English New Testament was printed there by 1526.

In Worms (Rhineland) at the same time

Chavot Yair

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with David Oppenheim’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Works

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