Aaron Samuel Kaidanover

Aaron Samuel ben Israel Kaidanover (1614 in Vilna - December 1, 1676 in Chmielnik) (Hebrew: אהרן שמואל קאידנוור) was a Polish-Lithuanian rabbi. Among his teachers were Jacob Hoeschel and his son Joshua Hoeschel.

During the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–1649) the Cossacks plundered Kaidanover's possessions, his valuable library and his manuscripts among them, and killed his two little daughters, and he arrived in Moravia an impoverished fugitive. He was elected rabbi successively of Langenlois in Lower Austria, Nikolsburg, Glogau, Fürth, and Frankfurt am Main, and then returned to Poland, in 1671 to become the rabbi of Cracow a position he held until his death on December 1, 1676 while attending the Vaad HaGalil of Krakow that took place in Chmielnik (Michael; but Azulai and Horovitz give 1679; see bibliography).

He wrote:

• Birkat ha-Zebaḥ, annotations to the Talmudical tractates of Kodashim (except Hullin and Bekorot), with a preface in which he narrated the remarkable events of his life (edited by his son-in-law Nahum Kohen, brother of Shabbethai Kohen (ש"ך), Amsterdam, 1669; another edition, with the commentary Omer Man, appeared [at Berlin?] in 1773).
• Birkat Shemuel, derashot on the Pentateuch, partly kabbalistic, with additions by his son Zevi Hirsch, its editor (Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1682)
• Emunat Shemuel, sixty responsa on matrimonial cases, edited by his son (ib. 1683)
• Tiferet Shemuel, novellæ to various Talmudic tractates, also edited by his son (ib. 1692). The annotations to Hoshen Mishpat contained in the last-named work were printed in Ture Zahav (Hamburg, 1692).

• Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, i. 124b, Warsaw, 1876;
• Benjacob, Oẓar ha-Sefarim, pp. 41, 87, 88, 659;
• Jacob Emden, Megillat Sefer, p. 5, Warsaw, 1896;
• Fürst, Bibl. Jud. i. 201, ii. 200;
• Grätz, Gesch. x. 81;
• Horovitz, Frankfurter Rabbinen, ii. 49-53, 99;
• Kaufmann, Vertreibung der Juden aus Wien, p. 62, note 6, Vienna, 1889;
• Michael, Or ha-Ḥayyim, No. 317;
• Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. cols. 772, 886.