18 September 1764 – 21 Elul 5524
Though one of the greatest rabbinic authorities of his age, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz was a kabbalist as well as a talmudist and a gifted orator. He served as a rabbinic judge in Prague, and later as rabbi of the joint communities of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbeck in Germany. The controversy surrounding his character related to kabbalistic amulets he distributed, which were suspected by Rabbi Jacob Emden, also from Prague, of revealing Eybeschütz’s secret Sabbatean leanings. False Messiah Shabtai Zvi had been discredited a century earlier, but still had an extensive following, and Eybeschütz had been among the rabbis who’d excommunicated his followers in 1725 in Prague.
The controversy raged for years, dying down and then rekindling after Eybeschütz’s son claimed to be a Sabbatean prophet in 1760, and became close to the Frankist movement. His father’s Yeshiva closed as a result, and four years later, on 21 Elul in 1764, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz passed away.