הרב יעקב וייל

Rabbi Yaakov ben Yehudah Weil, known as the Mahari Weil or Mahariv, lived and acted in Ashkenaz in the first half of the fifteenth century, and was among the great poskim of Ashkenazi Jewry in his generation. His teshuvot, gathered in the sefer She’ut Mahari Weil, held an important place in Ashkenazi psak in the generations that followed. He was born in Weil der Stadt and learned in his youth in the yeshivah of the Maharil, Rabbi Yaakov ben Rabbi Moshe Molin, in Mainz, and in the yeshivah of Rabbi Zalman Runkel there. In his teshuvot he brings his rebbi many times, in one place calling him the great light upon whom the eyes of all Israel rest.

In 5187/1427 he received semichah from the Maharil, who offered him the position of rosh yeshivah in Nuremberg. Rabbi Zalman Katz was serving there at the time, and although Rabbi Yaakov himself held that by strict law a rav has no lifetime hold on his position, he declined so as not to encroach on another. He continued to live in Nuremberg without a rabbinical post, working together with Rabbi Zalman Katz and sitting as a dayan on his beit din.

In 5189/1429 he was appointed rav of Augsburg, and from that year until 5198/1438 his name appears among the Jews of the city in the tax records. He represented the community within and without, his influence there was great and his rulings were accepted without question, and he set and strengthened the customs and takanot of Augsburg. Among the talmidim he raised there were Rabbi Yosef ben Moshe, author of Leket Yosher, and Rabbi Avraham Katzenellenbogen. When the city council resolved to expel the Jews he left. In 5203/1443 he was appointed rav of Erfurt, one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany at that time, where he examined the customs of the community and was careful to distinguish those grounded in halachah from those that ran against it — among other things he abolished the practice he found there of lighting the Chanukah lights with candles braided together.

He approved of pilpul only as an aid to learning and gave his rulings on reasoning alone. He was sharp with rabbanim of his day who regarded themselves as holding privileges beyond those of others, writing in a teshuvah that the rabbanim of his time had no such standing. Communities near and far turned to him as an authority, and among those who addressed questions to him were Rabbi Yisrael Isserlein and his talmid Rabbi Yisrael of Brno.