אברהם קלויזנר

Rabbi Avraham Klausner (Abraham Klausner, אברהם קלויזנר; c. 5100–5169/5170, roughly 1340–1409), known as the Maharak, was a rishon of Ashkenaz who served as rav, and most-likely also as rosh yeshiva, in Vienna in the fourteenth century. He was the son of Rabbi Chaim. In the Vienna city archive he carries the honorific “Meister” and appears as the husband of Rivka; she is listed as a widow in entries from the winter of 5170, while the two still appear as a married couple in the previous year, which fixes the time of his passing. From what the Leket Yosher brings in the name of Rabbi Yisrael Isserlein, and from the Maharil’s own teshuvot, it emerges that the Maharak headed the yeshiva in Vienna alongside the Maharam Sal and went on serving after the Maharam passed away.

His talmid Rabbi Isaac of Tyrnau testifies that the Maharak wrote hagahot on an earlier sefer of minhagim arranged by the calendar and beginning at Rosh Chodesh Elul; because of these hagahot the book is sometimes called Minhagei Maharak. It was edited by Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Ehrenreich and a second time by Machon Yerushalayim. He also wrote a sefer on hilchot shechita and bedika, hagahot on the Lamed-Vav Shearim of the Rokeach, printed from manuscript by Machon Mishnat Ephraim of Yerushalayim in 5781 within the second volume of Rabbeinu Menachem of Merseburg.

His two talmidim, the Mahari Tirna and the Maharil, wrote the two most famous and influential minhagim books of the centuries that followed, and both bring much Torah from the Maharak, their principal teacher. His rulings are cited as well by other sages of Ashkenaz, among them the Mahari Weil (who is cited often in the nosei keilim of the Shulchan Aruch).

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