[1][2] One of the most eminent Talmudists of his generation, he is recorded as the first person known by the epithet "Ba'al Shem" having been considered a great saint and believed to have used miraculous powers to create a golem.
[7][8] According to Jacob Emden, the son of the aforementioned Tzvi Ashkenazi, the Golem is said to have grown so that the rabbi feared that he might destroy the world.
[8][10] An anonymous 1630 manuscript (the earliest known written legend of a contemporary figure creating a golem) recounts that the golem continued to grow that the rabbi had to destroy it by erasing the Hebrew letter aleph, first letter from the word emet (truth)(אמת)[12] thereby rendering it met (dead)(מת).
The story is told that a German-speaking Palestinian Jew saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger.
So when the knights of the First Crusade came to besiege Jerusalem, one of Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms, Germany to repay the favor.
[20] Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of halakhic questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the eleventh century.
Years later, pupils of the Kheder (Jewish elementary school) of a teacher named Leib Paks claimed that in the cellar, when jumping on the floor boards, the muffled ring of a bell sound could be heard.