Иосиф бен-Яков из Пинчова

Polish rabbi and author; flourished in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; descendant of R. Jacob Pollak, son-in-law of R. Moses Krämer, chief rabbi of Wilna, and pupil of Ẓebi Hirsch, rabbi of Lublin. Pinczow was at first head of a yeshibah at Wilna; he then became rabbi of Kosovi (1688), and afterward of Seltzy, where he maintained a yeshibah. On account of persecutions he in 1698 fled to Hamburg, where he remained till 1702, returning then to Seltzy. Here the plague broke out in 1706; and Pinczow, whose life had often been threatened on account of accusations made against the Jews, fled to Berlin. In this city he printed his book "Rosh Yosef" (1717), on Talmudic halakot and haggadot, and arranged according to the order of the treatises. The rabbis who wrote the haskamot for this work, among whom was R. Jehiel Michael of Berlin, praise effusively Joseph's learning and piety.