He was born at
Brest-Litovsk in 1615; he died at Zolkiev (
Zhovkva) January 3, 1690. After he had studied under
Hirsh Darshan, Hillel went to
Vilna, where from 1650 to 1651 he was a member of the
rabbinical college, and the
bet din (Jewish court) of
Moses ben Isaac Judah Lima where he was one of the signatories to a
halakhic decision that women could not be deprived of their right to oppose divorce against their will. He stayed at Vilna until 1666, then became rabbi in
Kėdainiai and several other
Lithuanian towns. He was called in 1670 as rabbi to
Altona and
Hamburg, and in 1680 to Zolkiev. He was also a delegate to the
Council of the Four Lands at the fair of
Yaroslav. Hillel was the author of an important work entitled
Bet Hillel, a commentary and
novellæ on the four parts of the
Shulkhan Arukh, an important code of
Jewish law. His son,
Moses ben Hillel, published only the portions on ''Yoreh De'ah
and Eben ha-Ezer'', with the text (Dyhernfurth, 1691). He also wrote under the same title a
homiletic and mystical commentary on the
Pentateuch. ==References==