Eliezer Treves, the son of Naftali Herz Treves lived from 1493 to 1566. He was born in Neuss on the Rhine, lived in Cracow after 1531, and held the office of rabbi to the Jewish community in Frankfurt from 1541 onwards. He lived in the house Eichel, the official rabbinical residence. Eliezer Treves was widely regarded as an authority on matters of divorce and rabbinical election procedure. He frequently officiated as judge at disputes in other communities, and thus became one of the three rabbinical experts entrusted by the emperor Ferdinand I (1556 1564) to draft a decree governing the election of rabbis for the Jewish community in Prague. His reputation attracted many students to Frankfurt from abroad to study the Talmud at the yeshiva. He did not consider this institution to be an exclusive academy: it was open to all scholars within the community, and particularly to rabbinic judges. Among his more eminent pupils was the Frankfurt preacher and schoolmaster Akiwa Frankfurter. A handwritten regulation issued by Elizier Treves in 1559 throws light on the lifestyle of students of the day: it states that promissory notes issued by young single persons without their parents' knowledge or by students from outside Frankfurt without the knowledge of their rabbi had no validity and were to be destroyed.