נתן נטע שפירא

Rav Natan Nata Shapira of Cracow (5345/c. 1584–13 Av 5393/20 July 1633), known by the name of his sefer as the Megaleh Amukot and in English sources as Nathan Nata Spira, was among the rabbanim of Poland and the leading mekubalim of his time, and served as chief rabbi of Cracow. He was born to Rav Shlomo Shapira seven years after the passing of his grandfather, Rav Natan Nata Shapira the first, av beit din of Horodna and author of Imrei Shefer and Mevo Shearim, and was named for him; his lineage reaches back to Rashi. He learned under the Maharam of Lublin, and in his youth also took up philosophy, astronomy and dikduk. Around 5368/1608 he moved from Horodna to Kazimierz beside Cracow and married Roza, daughter of Moshe ben Yaakov, known as Moshe Yekeles, one of the notables and parnasim of the city.

In 5377/1617, at thirty-one, he was accepted as rosh yeshiva and darshan of the kehillah of Cracow in place of the mekubal Rav Moshe Mordechai Margaliot, from whom he received his guidance in the hidden Torah, and he led the “shul on the hill” in Kazimierz. Every public position he filled he filled without pay, since his father-in-law supplied all his needs, and beyond that he supported the tzedakah institutions and dedicated to the shul a silver plate, a parochet and mantles worked in gold and pearls. That same father-in-law built for him a mikveh and the shul on the hill, where he sat alone with his Maker and learned day and night; it was said that the light in his windows never went out. The minhag of Tzfat to say tikkun chatzot and weep over the churban, brought to Europe by Rav Gedaliah son of Rav Moshe Cordovero, reached Cracow, and he took it upon himself.

To his talmidim in the yeshiva he taught the revealed Torah by way of pilpul, and the Talmud and its commentators were fluent in his mouth — he would deliver the words of the Rif and the Tur by heart. But when he rose each Shabbat to speak before the public in his beit midrash or in the old shul of Cracow, he leaned also on the hidden Torah, expounding on every crown and every tip of a yud, and building from letter combinations and their numbers the kabbalistic secrets hinted in the letters of the Torah. Through him the number of those occupied in this wisdom grew, the young men of Cracow among them. His greatest talmid was Rav Shabtai Kohen, the Shach.

He wrote fifteen sefarim in the revealed and the hidden Torah, seven of them on the Chumash; part reached print and part remain in manuscript. Among them are his peirush on the Zohar, printed in his lifetime in Lublin in 5383/1623; Chidushei Anshei Shem on the Rif; Megaleh Amukot on the Torah; a thousand explanations on the small alef of the word “Vayikra,” most of which have not survived; and the Megaleh Amukot that is 252 approaches to Moshe Rabbeinu’s tefillah “Ea’evrah na” in parashat Va’etchanan, printed in Cracow in 5397. Rav Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov wrote a peirush on the Megaleh Amukot in his Agra deKallah on the Torah. He was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Cracow, where his wife and daughter lie as well; among his descendants are Rav Yonatan Eibeshitz, Rav Pinchas of Koretz, Rav Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, Rav Chaim Halberstam of Sanz, and Rav Meir Shapiro of Lublin.