ישראל מאיר פריימן

Rav Yisrael Meir Freimann (c. 5593/1832–2 Elul 5644/1884) was rav of Filehne and of Ostrowo in the Posen district, and a restorer of the literature of the geonim. Born in Krakow, he learned in the yeshivot of Galicia and Hungary, received semichah at eighteen and again from Rav Gedalia Tiktin of Breslau, and joined to his Torah a university training in the manner of the German rabbinate of his day. His marriage placed him in the first rank of that world: he wed Helene, daughter of Rav Yaakov Ettlinger of Altona, the Aruch LaNer, and his halachic essays and correspondence with his great father-in-law are preserved in the Binyan Tzion.

He served as rav of Filehne for a decade and of Ostrowo until his passing — and when the Breslau seminary sought him as its head after the death of its founder, he declined, remaining a rav of his kehillah. His scholarly monument is the edition of the Ve-Hizhir, the halachic midrash of the geonic era, which he brought out of manuscript in two volumes with a broad introduction — establishing its author as the late-geonic sage Chefetz Alluf — and with his own commentary, Anfei Yehuda, named for his father.

His son Aron Freimann became the great Judaica bibliographer, and his grandson Avraham Chaim Freimann, the scholar of the Rosh and of Jewish law, was among the kedoshim of the Hadassah convoy in Yerushalayim during the battle for Israel’s independence, 1948.