שאול ברלין

Rav Shaul Berlin (5500/1740–23 Cheshvan 5555/1794), called also Saul Levin after his father, was rav of Frankfurt on the Oder and the man behind Besamim Rosh, among the most disputed sefarim ever printed. He was born in Glogau into a distinguished rabbinic family descended from the Chacham Tzvi. His father, Rav Tzvi Hirsch Levin, was rav of Berlin and earlier of the Great Synagogue in London. He received semicha at twenty and at twenty-eight took the rabbanut of Frankfurt on the Oder.

Outwardly he kept the life of a rav all his days, while drawing close in secret to the maskilim and forming a sharp critique of the rabbanim of Europe. During the storm over Wessely’s Divrei Shalom VeEmet he composed without his name Ktav Yosher, a satire against the rabbinic chinuch of the day, printed only after his passing. In 5549/1789, under the pen name Ovadiah ben Baruch of Poland, he published Mitzpeh Yekutiel, a fierce attack on Torat Yekutiel, the sefer on shechitah by Rav Refael HaKohen of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek. Rabbanim across Europe put the book and its author under cherem; when Rav Tzvi Hirsch learned that the author was his own son he stood with him and called for the cherem to be annulled, and Rav Yechezkel Landau of Prague, a relative, held it invalid.

In 5553/1793 he printed Besamim Rosh — 392 teshuvot he presented as the Rosh’s, gathered by a Sephardic chacham named Rav Yitzchak di Molina — with a commentary of his own called Kassa DeHarsna. The rabbanim who received it examined it and concluded that it was forged: beside solid halachic material stood teshuvot none could account for, among them leave to travel on Shabbat for a man without money who will not ask for tzedakah, and a siman weighing whether halacha may be altered against the mesorah on philosophical grounds. The opposition was led by Rav Mordechai Banet, Rav Refael HaKohen and Rav Yaakov Katzenellenbogen. Rav Shaul gave up his rabbanut and left Berlin for Amsterdam and then London, where he was niftar about a year later, poor and alone; in his tzavaah he asked that the manuscripts he carried not be read but sent to his father, that no hesped be given, and that he be buried in the clothes he was wearing.

The sefer was never settled. The Sochatchover Rebbe, Rav Avraham Bornstein, wrote that it may not be kept in a Jewish home and may be burned even on a Yom Kippur that falls on Shabbat; yet dozens of poskim have quoted it in halachic give-and-take, weighing, in Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin’s words, what is said rather than who said it. Rav Ovadia Yosef brought its teshuvah on mourning one who took his own life in a psak he wrote in Cairo in 5710/1950, and later gave a haskamah to the 5744/1984 printing, from which some of the sharpest passages had been dropped.