זכריה מנדל בן אריה לייב

Rav Zechariah Mendel ben Aryeh Leib (d. c. 5466/1706) was rav and rosh yeshiva of Belz, among the leaders of the Vaad Arba Aratzot, and the author of the Be’er Heitev on Yoreh De’ah and Choshen Mishpat — the digest of the Shach and the Taz that generations of poskim have learned in the margins of the Shulchan Aruch. His Choshen Mishpat stands in the standard editions as he wrote it; the Be’er Heitev printed today on Yoreh De’ah was later reworked by Rav Avraham Oppenheim on the foundation of his sefer.

He was born into the rabbinic aristocracy of Krakow — his father, Rav Aryeh Leib, was rav of the city, as was his mother’s father, Rav Fishel — and his sisters married chachamim of the first rank, among them Rav Shmuel of Fuerth, author of the Beit Shmuel on Even HaEzer. After his father’s passing in 5431/1671 he served in Krakow and then in Turobin, and from 5449/1689 as rav of Belz, where he sat some seventeen years until his passing.

His descendants carried his Torah forward in that very town: through his daughters he was an ancestor of Rav Shalom Rokeach, the Sar Shalom of Belz, founder of the Belz dynasty — so that the town where the Be’er Heitev sat as rav became, a century later, the seat of one of the great chassidic courts of Galicia.