MENAHEM B. MOSES TAMAR:

By: Gotthard Deutsch, H. Brody

Poet and commentator; probably a pupil of Mordecai Comtino of Constantinople; flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at Adrianople or Philippopolis. He wrote commentaries to the books of Proverbs, Ruth, and Esther, a supercommentary to Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary to the Pentateuch, and a Hebrew grammar entitled "Rashe Besamim." He furnished a noteworthy contribution to Hebrew poetry in his "Azharot" (comp. Jew. Encyc. ii. 370-371), to which he wrote a commentary entitled "Tanḥumot El." He composed also other liturgical poems, including an imitation of Judah ha-Levi's "Zioniad," and a hymn for the commencement of Purim. It has not been proved—although the attempt has been made—that he is identical with Menahem b. Moses, the author of some liturgical poems, found in the Roman Maḥzor, in the Maḥzor of Avignon, and in a manuscript of Abraham Bedersi's "Diwan," now in the British Museum.

D. H. B.