Reb Eizik Reb Yekels zt"l

Biography

Reb Eizik Reb Yekels zt"l — also called Reb Eisik Reb Yekels, Reb Ajzyk Reb Jekeles, and in Polish Izaak (Isaac) Jakubowicz, meaning Yitzchok ben Yaakov — was a parnas and nagid of the Jewish kehillah in Kazimierz, Krakow, in the first half of the 17th century. He was niftar in Kazimierz on Shabbos, 26 Sivan 5413 (21 June 1653), and he rests in the Remah Beis Hachaim, beside the Remah Shul, the same Beis Hachaim as the Remu zy"a. The year of his birth is not given in the sources used here; accounts place it at the end of the 16th century.

He was a son of Reb Yaakov, called Reb Yekele or “Jakóbek the Rich,” a manhig of the kehillah and one of the “Council of Seven” that prepared the kehillah statutes in 1595 (5355). The sources describe Reb Eizik zt"l as a merchant and banker — he traded in gold, silver, and silk, and kept a shop near the Old Shul in Kazimierz — and he was known as “Izak the Rich.” From 1608 (5368) he served as a senior (parnas, elder) of the kehillah, almost all his life, until 1647 (5407), when in his old age he handed the position to his son Moshe (Moses Isaacowicz). He lived on the corner by the Beis Hachaim, across from the shul he later founded.

His wife was Braindel (Brajndla). An inscription on the wall of the shul, cited in the Encyclopedia of Kraków and in other local accounts, says that the idea to found the shul was hers. Hebrew-language sources name her as a daughter of Reb Yisroel Yechiel Rappaport, a dayan in Krakow. JewishGen’s list of eminent burials in the Remah Beis Hachaim records Braindel, wife of Izaak Jakubowicz, as nifteres in 1650, in a nearby grave.

His name is remembered above all for the shul he built in Kazimierz, called Reb Eizik Reb Yekels Shul, the Izaak Synagogue, or Ajzyka. Most sources, including the City of Kraków and a 2022 notice from the Kraków Jewish Community, say that King Władysław IV granted him permission to build the shul on 30 April 1638 (5398). One earlier page on the same community site says 30 April 1630; that year does not fit Władysław IV’s reign (1632–1648), and later writing from the same community gives 1638. Construction was delayed after protests from the parish priest of the nearby Corpus Christi church and from the bishop of Krakow, and the shul was opened in 1644 (5404). It was the largest of the Kazimierz shuls of that time, a baroque building that still stands at today’s Kupa / Izaaka Streets.

In Chasidic mesorah, Reb Eizik Reb Yekels zt"l is the Yid of the story of the treasure under the bridge in Prague. It is told — as Reb Simcha Bunim of Peshischa zy"a would tell young men who came to him, and as later recorded by Martin Buber and many others — that Reb Eizik dreamed more than once that he should go to Prague and dig for a treasure under the bridge by the king’s palace. He traveled there, but soldiers guarded the bridge day and night, and he did not dare to dig. After he had walked around the bridge for days, a captain asked him what he was seeking. When Reb Eizik told him the dream, the captain laughed: he himself had dreamed of a treasure under the stove of a Yid in Krakow named Eisik, son of Yekel — but only a fool, he said, would go so far because of a dream. Reb Eizik went home, dug under his own stove, found the treasure, and from it built the shul that is called Reb Eizik’s Shul. We bring this as the Chasidic mesorah that is said about him, not as a documented event from his lifetime. The historical record already describes him as a wealthy merchant and a parnas of the kehillah many years before the shul was built.

His matzeivah still stands in the Remah Beis Hachaim. Photographs of the stone are on this page. The wording was already printed in 1733 (5493) by the Hebraist Johann Christoph Wolf, in Bibliotheca Hebraea, volume 4, page 1205, and again by Chaim Dov Friedberg in Luchot Zikaron (1904). One side names “the aluf, k’moharar Eizik R. Y., who built the beis haknesses, the work of a craftsman’s hands.” The other side is a longer rhyme, and it records that his neshama left b’taharah on Shabbos, 26 Sivan 5413 (תי״ג). That Hebrew date matches 21 June 1653, which was in fact a Shabbos. A first reading of a photograph of the stone wondered whether the year might be 5403 (ת״ג); the published copies, and the civil date given by Bałaban and later writers, all have 5413 / 1653.

Your kvittel will be placed on the kever of Reb Eizik Reb Yekels zt"l in the Remah Beis Hachaim in Krakow.

Historical background

He lived in Krakow a dor after the Remu zy"a (niftar 1572), in the years when the Megaleh Amukos zy"a and then the Tosefos Yom Tov zy"a served in the city’s Torah leadership. The Tosefos Yom Tov zy"a was rav in Krakow from 1643, around the time the Izaak Shul was opened, and he also rests in the same Beis Hachaim. Reb Eizik’s later years were the years of the gezeiros of Tach v’Tat (1648–1649), a terrible tzarah for Polish Jewry. Kazimierz remained a great kehillah. He was niftar in 1653, in that same Beis Hachaim where Yossele the Holy Miser zy"a is also remembered.

Before & after