Isaac ben Jacob ha-Lavan

Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob or Yitzhak ben Yaakov, nicknamed "ha-Lavan" or "the white" was a 12th century rabbi of Bohemia. He was a Tosafist and liturgical poet who flourished at Prague in the late 1100s. He was the brother of the renowned traveler Petachiah of Regensburg. He was among the earliest of the tosafists ("ba'ale tosafot yeshanim"), a contemporary of Rabbi Eleazar of Metz, and a pupil of Rabbenu Tam ("Sefer ha-Yashar" §704; Solomon Luria, "responsa" 29). According to Recanati (Responsa, No. 168), Isaac directed the yeshibah of Ratisbon. He also lived at Worms for a time ("Agur," 71b). Isaac is mentioned in the Tosafot (Yeb. 5a, 71a; Ket. 38b; Zeb. 73b; and frequently elsewhere), and Isaac ben Moses, in his "Or Zarua'," No. 739, quotes Isaac ben Jacob's commentary on Ketubot, a manuscript of which exists in the Munich Library (No. 317). He is also mentioned in a commentary to the Pentateuch written in the first half of the thirteenth century (Zunz, "Z. G." p. 80). There is a piyyuṭ signed "Isaac b. Jacob," whom Zunz ("Litcraturgesch." p. 313) supposes to be lsaac ben Jacob ha-Laban.

ources

*Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, i.;
*Michael, Or ha- Ḥayyim, p. 507;
*Zunz, Z. G. pp. 33, 42, 45, 80;
*Grätz, Gesch. 3d ed., vi. 236;
*Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, p. 627.

References

*JewishEncyclopedia