Yair Bacharach

After the second marriage of his father to Phega, Bacharach become step brother of the famous jewish physician Tobias Cohn.

His father died in 1670 and although he left a will for the community to elect his son to replace him as chif rabbi they decided not to choose Bacharach but chose Aaron Teomim, a preacher from Prague.

The inscription on his tombstone begins with the words: “A great and dark horror befalls us from the hiding of the light of Rabbeinu...” Bacharach was the author of Chavos Yair ("Villages of Yair") a collection of responsa by the title of which is he commonly referred (first published in Frankfurt am Main, 1699); its title is a reference to his grandmother Chava as well as to a place mentioned in Numbers 32:41 and elsewhere in the Jewish Bible.

While he believed Kabbalah to be very holy, he maintained that it posed great theological danger, and should therefore only be studied by the extremely pious, and only with a teacher.

Although he discouraged in-depth study of Kabbalah, he encouraged simple reading of the Zohar,[5] and many of his writings contain Kabbalistic references, especially to explain communal customs.