 Jacob Saphir was a Jew of Romanian birth whose family settled in Ottoman Palestine when he was a boy.He became a rabbi, and in 1859, took a world tour to raise money for the reconstruction of the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Muslim authorities in 1721.Saphir was the first to recognize the historic significance of the Ben Ezra geniza, which he described in an 1874 book.