Jacob Kattina

KATTINA, JACOB (second half of 19^th century), rabbi and author. Kattina served as dayyan in Huszt, Carpathian Russia, in the bet din of Moses *Schick (1849–79). Kattina wrote two works which he published anonymously. The first, Raḥamei ha-Av, was first published in Czernowitz in 1865 and has been frequently reprinted. In 1936 it was published in Marghita, Transylvania, with the notes of Solomon Zalman Ehrenreich (2^nd ed. Jerusalem, 1950 and 1958), and in 1939, in Djerba, with the Judeo-Arabic translation of Ḥayyim Houri. The work has 58 chapters on moral improvement and in the introduction, the author says: "I called this booklet Raḥamei ha-Av ["Mercy of the Father"] for it is true mercy for a man to chasten his child to lead him in the ways of God, this being the sole purpose of man." The second work, Korban he-Ani, homilies on the Pentateuch in a kabbalistic and ḥasidic vein, was published in Lemberg in 1872 and 1882.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.