KATTINA, JACOB

KATTINA, JACOB (second half of 19th 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 (2nd 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. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.J.(L.) Greenwald (Grunwald), Zikkaron la-Rishonim (1909), 19; J. Cohen, in: KS, 33 (1957/58), 136. (Naphtali Ben-Menahem)