הרב שבתי בן מאיר הכהן

Rav Shabtai HaKohen (5382/1622–1 Adar 5423/1663), known for all generations as the Shach after his Siftei Kohen, sits with the Taz on the page of the Shulchan Aruch itself — the two are the “ashlei ravrevei” of Yoreh De’ah. Known in English sources as Shabbatai HaKohen, he was born in Amstibove, where his father Rav Meir HaKohen, a talmid of the Maharam of Lublin, served as rav and gave him his first learning; as a child he also learned under the Megaleh Amukot, at twelve he was sent to the yeshiva of Rav Yehoshua Heschel, the Maginei Shlomo, near Krakow, and from there to Lublin, where he learned under Rav Naftali Katz. He married Yente-Leah, daughter of the wealthy Shimon Wolf of Vilna, a descendant of the Rema, and sat in Vilna at his father-in-law’s table; in 5411/1651 he was seated on the Vilna beit din beside Rav Moshe Lima, the Chelkat Mechokek.

In 5406/1646, at twenty-four, he published the Siftei Kohen on Yoreh De’ah in Krakow with the haskamot of the gedolim of Poland and Lithuania — the very year the elder Taz’s Turei Zahav on Yoreh De’ah appeared. His Nekudot HaKesef set out hasagot on the Taz; the Taz replied in his “Daf Acharon,” and the Shach answered again in a sharp “Kuntres Acharon” — exchanges that entered the architecture of psak. Though the Vaad Arba Aratzot ruled in 5443/1683 to follow the Taz where the two differ, the rabbanim of Poland mostly held like the Shach, while the kehillot of Germany followed the Taz. From 5434/1674 the Siftei Kohen has been printed in the editions of the Shulchan Aruch, and his Siftei Kohen on Choshen Mishpat appeared in Amsterdam in 5427/1667, after his petirah. Beside them stand Sefer HaAroch on the Tur Yoreh De’ah; Tekafo Kohen on the dinim of tefisah, learned in the yeshivot to this day — Rav Yonatan Eibeshitz wrote a kitzur of it, and the Kuntres HaSefeikot was written around it; Poel Tzedek, the 613 mitzvot arranged by the days of the week; and Gevurat Anashim on Even HaEzer.

The gezeirot of tach v’tat passed before his eyes, and he recorded the churban of the kehillot in Megillat Eifah (Amsterdam 5411/1651) which described the atrocities of a 1648 massacre against Jews in Uman (Ukraine). He also composed selichot for the twentieth of Sivan to memorialize these events. In 5415/1655, when the war reached Vilna, he fled with the whole kehillah, wandered by way of Lublin and Prague to Moravia, and was received as rav of Holešov, where he was niftar on 1 Adar 5423/1663, barely past forty. His kever in the Jewish cemetery of Holešov stands to this day and is visited from all over the world, and the town’s old shul is called the Shach Shul after him.