Mikdash Melekh, RaMaZ Commentary on Zoharמקדש מלך, פירוש הרמ״ז על ספר הזהר
Tzfat · 1680
מז
RaMaZ
RaMaZ
1620 CE–1697 CE · Acharonim · Amsterdam
Moshe Zacuto (RaMaZ) was an Italian Jewish scholar and Kabbalist active in Venice and Mantua during the seventeenth century. A member of the distinguished Zacuto family of scholars and physicians, he was deeply learned in both halakhah and Kabbalah, and served as a significant intellectual figure in the Venetian Jewish community. He was known for his mystical writings and his efforts to synthesize rabbinic learning with Kabbalistic thought. Zacuto lived through a period of relative stability for Italian Jews and contributed substantially to the intellectual life of the Venetian and Mantuan Jewish communities, though detailed biographical information about his teachers and direct students remains limited in surviving records.
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Stop 1 of 41620Born
AmsterdamאמסטרדםNetherlands
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
Amsterdam in this era
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Amsterdam emerged as a sanctuary for Jews fleeing persecution across Europe, transforming into one of the continent's most vibrant Jewish centers under Dutch Protestant rule. The Portuguese Jewish community, composed largely of Marranos who had escaped Iberia, established themselves in the city's expanding neighborhoods and soon created an intellectual and mercantile powerhouse, their wealth from trade funding elegant synagogues and supporting both Talmudic scholarship and mystical pursuits. The Ashkenazi Jews who arrived later, especially after the Chmielnicki massacres devastated Polish Jewry in 1648, found refuge here too, establishing their own institutions and eventually outnumbering their Sephardic counterparts. Amsterdam's yeshivas became renowned across Europe for rigorous study of halakha and Kabbalah alike—tensions between rationalist and mystical approaches played out in lecture halls and study circles. The city's famous Portuguese Synagogue, completed in 1675 with its magnificent wooden ceiling and abundant natural light, stood as a symbol of the community's freedom and flourishing, while the bustling Jodenbreestraat (Jews' Broad Street) pulsed with Hebrew printing presses, manuscript traders, and scholars debating the nature of divine emanation and ethical practice.
About Amsterdam
Major Sephardi/Ashkenazi printing center; home of Elazar Rokeach (Maaseh Rokeach).
In Amsterdam at the same time
Yashar of Candia, Be'er HaGolah, Yaakov Sasportas, Shabsai Bass, Pri Chadash
Across the traditions, in Amsterdam at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with RaMaZ’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with RaMaZ’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Islamic world
Christian world
Buddhist world
Works(1)
Related figuresרח״וChaim Vitalהאר״יArizalRBenjamin HaKohen VitaleRAvraham RovigoRYeshayahu BassanSuggested by shared subject matter, not a documented teaching relationship.