You don’t need to go further than his name to get a sense that Hacham Zvi Ashkenazi (1658-1718) must have been a unique and eccentric character. “Hacham” is a Sephardi honorific roughly equivalent to the term “rabbi.” Yet, as his last name lays bare, Hacham Zvi was an Ashkenazi scholar.

With only one exception (Isaac Bernays), there are no other Ashkenazi rabbinic figures of renown who used this title. But the anomaly of his name is just the beginning.

Hacham Zvi frequently broke with Ashkenazi practice in favor of Sephardi custom. At the same time, while serving the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam, he was run out of the city by the Sephardi establishment. Why did he take on many Sephardi practices and a Sephardi title? And why was Amsterdam’s Sephardi leadership so unnerved by him?

As

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