שלום שכנא מלובלין

Rav Shalom Shachna of Lublin (c. 5255/1495–1 Kislev 5319/1558) was the teacher of the generation that shaped psak in Poland: talmid of Rav Yaakov Pollak, father of the pilpul method of Talmud study, whom he followed as rosh yeshiva in Lublin, and rebbi of — among many — the Rema, Rav Moshe Isserles, who was also his son-in-law, and Rav Chaim ben Betzalel, brother of the Maharal of Prague. His father Yosef, a tax farmer, held a permit from King Zygmunt I to live within the walls of Lublin. In 5275/1515 he established the yeshiva of Lublin, to which talmidim streamed from across Europe, and around 5280/1520 he became rav of Lublin and its district; some called him “Meor HaGolah.” In 5302/1541 the crown appointed him one of the two chief rabbis of Polish Jewry — “rav kollel and elder of the Jews” — and he remained the leading rav of Lublin even after the decree lapsed.

For all his stature he refused to let his pesakim be printed. His son Rav Yisrael testified that many begged his father to compose a sefer of psak, and that he answered, in his great anavah, that since the halachah follows the last authority — hilcheta k’batra — the world would then rule like him alone, and “I do not want the world to lean on me”; in this he held to the way of his rebbi Rav Yaakov Pollak, and he enjoined his son from printing his manuscripts. Beyond a small number of teshuvot printed in his lifetime, among them his pesakim on a matter of kiddushin, he left no sefer, though the hagahot he wrote on his own Shas were used by the Lublin printers in a new edition of the Talmud. He was niftar on 1 Kislev 5319/1558; his matzeivah still stands in the old Jewish cemetery of Lublin, one of the very few preserved from that era, and his son Rav Yisrael headed the yeshiva of Lublin after him.