RAPA (PORTRAPA), SIMḤAH BEN GERSHOM HA-KOHEN:

By: Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., A. S. Waldstein

Talmudic scholar and author of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; born at Porto, Italy; died at Vienna. He was a younger cousin of Menahem Abraham Rapa; when the latter changed his name to Rapoport, Simḥah began to call himself Portrapa (Carmoly, "Ha'Orebim u-Bene Yonah," p. 8).

Rapa went to Venice, where he lived at the house of his cousin, and studied Talmud under Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, rabbi of that city. In 1593 he settled at Prossnitz, Moravia; and thence moved to Vienna, where he remained till his death. He was the author of "Ḳol Simḥah" (Prossnitz, 1602), a hymnal acrostic on Saturday.

E. C. A. S. W.