BERLIN, DAVID B. (JUDAH) LOEB:
By: Louis Ginzberg
Rabbi of the three united congregations, Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck; born probably at Eisenstadt, Hungary, in the second half of the seventeenth century; died at Altona March 5, 1771. Very little is known of his life, although he doubtless was a great Talmudic authority, for otherwise he could not have been rabbi of these three congregations. His brother, Isaiah Berlin, and his brother-in-law, Joseph b. Menahem Steinhart, praise him particularly, and his epitaph also—communicated by Wittkower, "Aggudat Peraḥim," p. 288—mentions hisscholarship and his great piety. The responsa collection, "Zikron Yosef," by J. Steinhart, contains two of Berlin's responsa (pp. 74d, 82a), and the Bodleian Library contains some of his homilies and novellæ on the Talmud. Berlin was at first rabbi in Dessau, and from 1768 to his death rabbi of the three congregations mentioned above.
- Berliner, Iesaja Berlin, 1878, p. 8;
- Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, pp. 227, 228;
- Neubauer, Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS. No. 526.
