R' Moshe Fiszel

The most influential family in Kraków’s Jewish community from the 1470s to the mid-sixteenth century. Members of the Fiszel family served as creditors to King Casimir the Jagiellonian and his sons Jan Olbracht, Aleksander, and Sigismund I. The family’s origins are disputed; it is possible that they came from Prague, elsewhere in Bohemia, or Germany.

Efrayim Fiszel and his three sons, Ya‘akov, Mosheh, and Yosef, first appear in sources from Kraków in the 1460s. Around 1477, Mosheh and Ya‘akov quarreled with the elders of the Kraków Jewish community, and though the gubernatorial court sentenced them to exile, the conflict was ultimately averted by the vice-voivod in his capacity as judge of the Jews (iudex iudaeorum). From that time on, their position was secure, and after Ya‘akov’s death, Mosheh became head of the family. Mosheh Fiszel and his wife Raḥel had six children—three daughters, Ester, Hendel, and Sara; and three sons, Efrayim (Franczek), Stefan (originally Mosheh), and Yitsḥak. Yitsḥak became head of the family after his father’s death. Sara, the daughter of Raḥel and Mosheh, married David Zehner, the rabbi of Buda in Hungary; her sister Ester married Ya‘akov Pollak, then a rabbi in Prague; and the third daughter, Hendel, became the wife of Asher Lemel. The latter two men represented the first generation of prominent Jewish scholars active in Kraków.

FISHEL (Fischel), wealthy family prominent in Jewish society in *Cracow-Kazimierz, Poland, at the close of the 15th and first half of the 16th century; named after Ephraim Fishel with whom the family arrived in Cracow from Bohemia. He and his four sons had commercial dealings with the Polish nobility. After initial friction with earlier-established Cracow Jews, the Fishel family took a leading place in the community, and two of its members were among the signatories of an agreement between the community leaders and the municipal council in Cracow in 1485. By 1475 Ephraim Fishel senior had died and his extensive business had been taken over by his sons. Of them Moses (d. c. 1504), a banker and one of the community leaders, mentioned first in 1477, was principally engaged in the lease of customs duties and other royal revenues. In 1499 he was accused of extortion in collecting the poll tax from the Jews of the region of *Gniezno. In 1503, with his brother Jacob, Moses leased the royal customs revenues in the provinces of Great Poland and Masovia for an annual payment of 2,500 Hungarian florins, 24 kg. of saffron and 120 kg. of black pepper. His wife RACHEL (Raszka Moyżeszowa) engaged independently in moneylending from 1483. She was in contact with the courts of kings Casimir iv, John Albert, and Alexander. As creditor of Polish kings, she received compensation in an interesting way from King Alexander. In 1504 he annulled the crown debts due to her and her late husband and ordered the mint to mint coins from her silver bars; the coins were worth 1600 florins more than the bars, being 1000 as repayment of principal and 600 for interest. Of their daughters, Esther married Jacob *Pollak, Hendel married the kabbalist Asher Lemel, rabbi of Kazimierz, and Sarah married David Zehner of Buda, at the age of 12.