Dovid Frankel

Rabbi Dovid ben Naftali Fränkel was a rabbinic scholar remembered for his sustained engagement with the Jerusalem Talmud, a corpus that earlier generations had studied far less closely than its Babylonian counterpart. Born in Berlin around 1704, he was appointed rabbi of Dessau in 1737, and in the early 1740s returned to his native city as its chief rabbi, a position he held until his death in 1762. His lasting contribution is Korban Ha'Eidah, a running commentary on the Yerushalmi that, in the manner of Rashi, aims to clarify the plain sense of the text; a companion set of notes and novellae, Shirei Korban, accompanied it, with the parts appearing between 1743 and 1760. Among his students was Moses Mendelssohn, who first studied under him in Dessau and later followed him to Berlin to continue that learning.