אליעזר מטוך

Rabbeinu Eliezer of Touques was among the last of the baalei haTosafot, living in the second half of the thirteenth century, and the editor of the Tosafot as most of the world learns them. He was the nephew and talmid of Rav Yechezkiah of Magdeburg, the Mahari”ch, whom he called “my teacher, my uncle.”

He took the collectionsof the Tosafot that came before him — the Tosafot of Shantz and the Tosafot of Evreux — reworked them, and set his own observations alongside under the title Gilyon HaTosafot; the result is known as Tosafot Tuch. Unlike other collections, its way is to explain the sugya rather than to rule the halachah. Gershom Soncino, who first brought them to press, relates that these Tosafot lay scattered in different places across France, and that he gathered those on the masechtot learned in the yeshivot and printed them beside the Gemara. From his edition they passed into the Bomberg Shas and from there into every printing since, so that in many masechtot the Tosafot on the daf are his; for the remaining masechtot the printers had to fall back on other collections, less carefully edited. The Tosafot on Eruvin have likewise been identified as his.

In some masechtot his own notes stand at the side of the page under the heading Gilyon Tosafot or Tosafot Yeshanim; Rav Moshe Yehuda Blau printed the Gilyon of Tosafot Tuch on Yevamot, Bava Kamma and Chullin in Shitat HaKadmonim, and the Tosafot Tuch on Kiddushin were printed from manuscript. Later generations held them in high regard: the Maharik ruled that where two collections of Tosafot differ one follows Tosafot Tuch, since they are the later, and Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi, in the Shita Mekubetzet on Ketubot, urged the learner to turn the Gilyonot over and over again, for he would find them full of good sense. Rav Eliezer also wrote a commentary on the Torah, which is not in our hands but is listed among his works in a manuscript of the Sefer HaRikmah of Rav Yonah ibn Janach.