הרב ישראל משקלוב

Rabbi Yisrael ben Shmuel Ashkenazi of Shklov (5530/1770, Shklov – 9 Sivan 5599/1839, Teveria) was a rav, a shadar and one of the leaders of the aliyah of the talmidim of the Gaon of Vilna, and the author of Peat HaShulchan. He was born in Shklov to a well-known family of rabbanim; his grandfather Rabbi Azriel of Shklov had gone up to Eretz Yisrael in 5532/1772. He came to learn before the Gaon of Vilna around 1796 together with his companion Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov, and the two stood out at once among the Gaon’s talmidim, occupying themselves with copying his writings and spreading them. After the Gaon was niftar he brought to press the Gaon’s commentary on Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim, and published Mishnat Eliyahu and the Gaon’s glosses on masechet Shekalim of the Yerushalmi together with his own commentary on that masechta, Taklin Chadtin — all three of which were taken into the Vilna edition of Shas.

He headed the third group of the aliyah, together with Rabbi Chaim Katz the rav of Pakrai, reaching Tzfat in Tishrei 5570/1809 and joining the new community there, which together numbered some hundred and fifty souls. The community’s material state was hard, and it was clear that without help from outside it could not hold; the elders assembled and resolved to send him abroad to raise funds. He set out by way of Constantinople for Lithuania a few months after his arrival, received help and a letter of recommendation from Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in Volozhin, and traveled through Vilna, Warsaw and Minsk, sending the contributions back to Tzfat and printing Taklin Chadtin along the way. He returned to Eretz Yisrael after three years of wandering.

What awaited him was bitter. Plague broke out in Tzfat in the summer of 5573, and as he fled with his household toward Yerushalayim his wife was niftar on the road and was buried at Shefaram; in Yerushalayim the plague took his son-in-law Yoel, his daughter Leah, two sons and another daughter, and word reached him of the passing of his father and mother. He was left with his young daughter Sheindel. At the beginning of 5574 he returned to Tzfat and, together with Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov, stood at the head of the community and labored to rebuild it.

His principal work is Peat HaShulchan, written as a supplement to the Shulchan Aruch setting out the agricultural laws that apply in Eretz Yisrael, which Rabbi Yosef Karo had left out; he built it on what the Rambam had codified, adding other early opinions and his own commentary, and he took into it the Gaon’s notes on Seder Zera’im together with a full commentary of his own called Beit Yisrael. It was printed in Tzfat in 5596/1836 at the press of Yisrael Bak.