Jacob Joshua Falk

Jacob Joshua (; also known as Yaakov Yehoshua ben Tzvi Hirsch, Yaakov Yehoshua, or the Pnei Yehoshua; 1680 – January 16, 1756) was a Polish and German rabbi and Talmudist. Name

Biography Early life Falk was born in Kraków in 1680. On his mother's side he was a grandson of Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel , the author of Maginne Shelomoh. While a youth he became examiner of the Hebrew teachers of Lemberg. In 1702 his first wife, Leah Landau (daughter of Solomon Segal Landau), his child, Guitel, and his mother were killed by an explosion of gunpowder that wrecked the house in which they lived. Falk himself narrowly escaped death, and was trapped in the debris of the explosion for hours. He vowed that if he got out alive, he would write a Sefer defending rashi from the questions of tosafos. He was saved, and thereafter wrote the Pnei Yehoshua. He married a second wife, Toba, with whom he had four sons and at least two daughters.

He was called to the rabbinate of Tarlow and Lisko, small towns in Galicia. In 1717 he replaced Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi in the chief rabbinate of Lemberg; he was called to Berlin in 1731.

Author of Pnei Yehoshua

Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua was one of the greatest Talmudists of his time and his book of commentary and novellae on the Talmud, Pnei Yehoshua, is one of the classic works of the era of Acharonim. It remains an important book in the study of Talmud to this day.

He wrote Pnei Yehoshua in four parts. Two of them were published in Frankfurt am Main in 1752; the third, with his Pesak bet-Din Chadash, and fourth (which, in addition to Talmudic novellae, contains novellae on the Tur Choshen Mishpat and Likkutim) were published in Fürth in 1766 and 1780 respectively. Falk mentions writing a commentary on the Pentateuch, but it was never published.