Rabbi Yaakov Emden (1697-1776), known as Ya’avetz (which stands for Yaakov ben Tzvi), was one of the most famous rabbis and rabbinic authors of his day, best known for his staunch defense of Orthodoxy against the Sabbatean influences. The Ya’avetz also stood out in his era for being one of the very first rabbinical figures to write an autobiography, letting us glean insight into his personal life, in ways that aren’t available for the bulk of his contemporaries.
A small piece of paper with his handwriting that I sold this week was a result of an unusual scenario which he wrote about in his Mor Uktzia (siman 218 in his commentary on Shulchan Aruch). The Ya’avetz recounts how several times, as he was studying to the point of exhaustion, he would fall asleep on his books, and occasionally cause a candle to shift and consume his papers and make burnholes in the books he was using. He writes of the miracle of his having woken up just in time, otherwise he would have been consumed in the fire that would have erupted. He notes that he recited the HaGomel blessing as gratitude for his life being saved by G-d.
The Ya’avetz remarks that this occurred as he was studying the Tur on the laws of blessings, including the blessing to recite after a miracle occurs. The fire made a hole through his volume of the Tur, leaving a gap in the text, which he proceeded to fill by hand. Over the years, these fragments that he filled in dispersed and one such page I was lucky enough to acquire and find a home for.
