Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ashkenazi was born in Moravia in 1656 and studied in Salonica. He served the Sephardi community of Sarajevo, where he took the Sephardi title Chacham, and so is known as the Chacham Tzvi. During the siege of Buda in 1686 his wife and daughter were killed. He later led a study house in Altona, near Hamburg. In 1710 he became rabbi of the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam, but his fight against the Sabbatean preacher Nehemiah Hayon cost him the post in 1714. After stays in London and elsewhere, he became rabbi of Lviv (Lemberg) shortly before his death in 1718.

His volume of responsa, Teshuvot Chacham Tzvi, is famous for bold rulings. In one he ruled that a chicken said to have been found without a heart must have had one, since no creature can live without it. In another he discussed whether a golem, like the one attributed to his ancestor Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm, could count toward a minyan. His son, Rabbi Jacob Emden, carried on his campaign against Sabbateanism.