JACOB OF ORLEANS

JACOB OF ORLEANS (d. 1189), tosafist; pupil of jacob tam in Orleans. Like his fellow-student, yom tov b. Isaac of Joigny, Jacob settled in England, and like him, met a martyr's death. While in England, where moneylending was the Jews' main source of livelihood, he drew up a formula for loans, whereby the prohibition against usury could be circumvented (Haggahot Mordekhai to BM, 454–5). This formula gave rise to considerable perplexity in later generations. According to Meir of Rothenburg, the practice of employing a non-Jew to heat houses on the Sabbath in winter was introduced in France on Jacob's authority (Responsa, Prague (1608), 92). Jacob composed tosafot on a number of tractates and his name frequently occurs in the printed tosafot. His influence is particularly noticeable in the tosafot to tractates Pesaḥim, Zevaḥim, and Menaḥot. His commentary on the Pentateuch is extant in manuscript, and extracts from it are to be found in various collections of commentaries by tosafists on the Pentateuch. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Urbach, Tosafot, 122–4. (Israel Moses Ta-Shma)