הרב יחזקאל לנדא

Rav Yechezkel ben Yehuda HaLevi Landau (18 Cheshvan 5474/1713–17 Iyar 5553/1793), known for all generations as the Noda BiYehudah after his teshuvot, was rav of Prague and among the greatest poskim of the eighteenth century. He was born in Opatow (Apta), Poland, to Rav Yehuda Segal Landau, parnas of the kehillah and a leader in the Vaad Arba Aratzot, of a family whose lineage reaches Rashi. He learned Gemara with his father, then under Rav Yitzchak Isaac Segal of Ludmir, and from bar mitzvah age in the famed kloiz of Brody. At eighteen he married Liba, daughter of the gvir Yaakovke of Dubno, and at twenty, in 5494/1734, was appointed dayan in one of the four batei din of Brody.

In 5505/1745 he became rav of Yampol, where he founded a yeshiva and wrote takkanot for the kehillah and the chevra kadisha in its pinkas. From Yampol he stepped into the great machloket between Rav Yaakov Emden and Rav Yonatan Eybeschutz over the kameyot, proposing that the disputed kameyot be put away and the polemics silenced — a course whose tact brought his name before the kehillah of Prague, which crowned him its rav in 5515/1755. There he served until his petirah, founding a yeshiva in which he gave four shiurim each day, two in Gemara and two in Shulchan Aruch; among his talmidim were Rav Avraham Danzig, author of the Chayei Adam, Rav Elazar Fleckeles of the Teshuvah MeAhavah, and Rav Mordechai Benet. Esteemed in the government circles of Bohemia, he interceded against harsh decrees; in the Seven Years’ War he refused to flee Prague and composed a tefillah for the royal house, and when conscription was decreed on the Jews in 5549/1789 he strengthened the hearts of the recruits.

A fire in 5532/1772 consumed his house and his writings; in the years that followed he began to print. The Noda BiYehudah (Prague, 5536/1776), named for his father from the pasuk in Tehillim, stands among the pillars of shu”t literature, prized for its straight sevara, its independence among the acharonim, and its faithfulness to the rishonim — among its famous teshuvot, the ruling that limits autopsies to a case of present danger. Beside it stand the Tziyun LeNefesh Chayah (the Tzelach) on the Shas, named for his mother Chayah, the Dagul Mervavah on the Shulchan Aruch, and the derashot of Ahavat Tzion and Doresh LeTzion. In the storm over the get of Cleves in 5527/1767 he stood with those who upheld the get. In psak he held fast to the two Talmuds as the wellspring of hora’ah, answering more than once that it was not his way to take up a matter with no source in the Gemara, and he opposed public and mass engagement with kabbalah — though, as his son wrote, he knew all the kitvei HaAri.

Against the winds of the haskalah he stood openly: he objected to Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation of the Torah, though he declined to place it under cherem, and came out against Naftali Hertz Wessely’s pamphlet calling to remake Jewish education around secular studies. He was niftar in Prague on 17 Iyar 5553/1793 and rests in the Jewish cemetery there; his son Rav Shmuel Landau succeeded him in the rabbanut of Prague and brought his father’s derashot to press.