הרב שמואל בן אורי שרגא פייבוש

Rav Shmuel ben Rav Uri Shraga Feivush, known to everyone who opens a Shulchan Aruch by the name of his commentary Beit Shmuel, was rav of Shydlow in Poland and of Fürth in Germany. He was born in Woydyslaw in the middle of the seventeenth century and learned in the yeshiva of Krakow under Rav Yehoshua Heschel ben Rav Yaakov; after his rebbe’s passing he continued under Rav Aryeh Leib ben Rav Zecharia Mendel, who took him as a son-in-law for his daughter. His brothers-in-law — Rav Yechezkiah Yehoshua Feivel Teomim and Rav Shaul ben Rav Heshel of Krakow — had married her sisters. English sources give his name as Samuel ben Uri Shraga Phoebus, and the kinnui is spelled variously Faivish, Fayvish and Faibesh.

He served in the rabbanut of Shydlow, and there, by one account, wrote the sefer that carries his name. In 5451/1691 he was accepted as av beit din and mara d’atra of Fürth, arriving in the winter of 5452, and he headed the yeshiva of the city as well. After some three years he left Fürth in 5454/1694 and returned to Shydlow as mara d’atra, a post he held until his passing; he was buried in Shydlow.

Beit Shmuel is one of the few full commentaries ever written on Even HaEzer, a chelek of the Shulchan Aruch that had been largely left aside. Rav Shmuel set out to redeem it, applying to his labor the pasuk that the stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone — the Even that the builders, the talmidei chachamim, had neglected would be restored to the center of the beit midrash. The first edition he printed in Dyhernfurth in 5449/1689, the first Hebrew sefer ever produced in that town. In Fürth he went over the work again together with his talmidim, and the revised edition appeared there in 5454/1694, bound with Rav Moshe Lima’s Chelkat Mechokek under the joint title Apei Ravrevi; from then on it has been printed in nearly every edition of the Shulchan Aruch. His son-in-law Rav Uri Feivush Hamburger — known in England as Aaron Hart, the first chief rabbi of Great Britain — wrote in his hakdamah to Urim VeTumim a tefillah that he merit to bring out his father-in-law’s writings on Yoreh De’ah.