ZEVI HIRSCH EICHENSTEIN was born in 1763, three years after the death of Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement, at a time when, under the leadership of the Maggid of Mezhirech (d. 1772), the movement had begun to win adherents in eastern Europe. Eichenstein's birthplace is given variously as Sambor or the neighbouring townlet of Safrin in eastern Galicia but he became known as R. Hirschele Zhidachover (or simply ‘the Zhidachover’), after the nearby town where he functioned as a Hasidic master. He was introduced by his younger brother, Moshe, to R.Jacob Isaac ofLublin (1745-1815), the famous disciple of the Maggid known as the Seer of Lublin, and became his devoted follower while at the same time cultivating his own original approach to Hasidism.

As with many other Hasidic masters, the accounts of Eichenstein's life and career have been so mingled with pious legend that it is now extremely difficult to reconstruct his biography. Nevertheless, the salient features are known. He received the conventional Jewish education of his time, managing to become a very competent talmudist under the guidance of rabbinic scholars, as he himself relates in this work. He tells us that he also acquired a knowledge of astronomy and other natural sciences, no doubt through his reading of the few works on these subjects in Hebrew, and he was familiar with the writings of the medieval Jewish philosophers. At the age of 20 he began the study of kabbalah, a subject which came to exercise a powerful hold on his mind and heart.

Eichenstein married the daughter of a pious innkeeper in the village of Roda, within walking distance of the town of Rodzil; he was then supported by his father-in-law, after the fashion of those days, so that he could devote himself to study without having any financial worries. His only son, Michel, died in his youth, but his four daughters married scholars who, together with his four learned brothers and their sons, became the representatives of the Zhidachover school in Hasidism. In fact, his foremost disciples were his nephews Yitzhak Eisik of Zhidachov (1804-72) and Yitzhak Eisik of Komarno (1806-74).