21 Nisan · Yahrzeit
Rabbi Isaac ben Abraham Uziel - "Maaneh Lashon"
Isaac ben Abraham Uziel (1550 - 1622) was a Spanish physician, poet, and grammarian, born in Fez.
Yahrzeit - 21 Nissan
Resting place - the old Portuguese-Spanish cemetery on the Amstel River, Amsterdam
At one time he held the position of rabbi in Oran, Algeria, but toward the end of his life he left that city to settle in Amsterdam, where he founded a Talmudic school whose students included Menasseh ben Israel and Isaac Aboab da Fonseca. Disturbed by the laxity in religious matters that he observed among many members of the Sephardic community, Uziel delivered a series of lectures that led to the founding of a new community called "Neveh Shalom." In 1610, after the death of Judah Vega, Uziel was appointed chief rabbi.
Uziel was the author of the Hebrew grammar "Maaneh Lashon," edited by his student Isaac Nehemiah in Amsterdam in 1627 (2nd ed. 1710). He also left in manuscript many Hebrew and Spanish poems (Libros Poeticos en Declaracion de Todos los Equivocos de las Sagradas Letras); these were highly praised by De Barrios, who portrays the author as a great poet, a skilled musician, and an outstanding mathematician. Yosef Serrano dedicated a poem to Uziel, which was included in "Temime Derekh."
His famous student was Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel - one of the great figures among the Sephardic Jews who came to Holland and opened a new Jewish world to the vast numbers of refugees who fled the fires of the Inquisition of the Dark Middle Ages.
May the merit of the tzadik protect Am Yisrael!
https://dailyzohar.com/tzadikim/1255-Rabbi-Isaac-ben-Abraham-Uziel