הרב אברהם ברודא

Rav Abraham ben Saul Broda (5410/1650–30 Nisan 5477/1717), Rav Avraham Broda, was one of the gedolim of his generation, rav and rosh yeshiva of Prague, Metz, and Frankfurt, called by his contemporaries the rav of all the exile. Born in Bumsla near Prague to Rav Shaul Broda, he was sent as a boy of rare promise to the great yeshiva of Rav Yitzchak ben Ze’ev, known as Rav Yitzchak Charif, rav of Krakow, who gave him semicha. Back in Prague he married the daughter of Rav Eliezer Lipman Graetz, av beit din of Bumsla, and helped him run the Bumsla yeshiva.

His first rabbanut was Lichtenstadt, where his wife passed away; soon after he was called to Raudnitz, where he founded the first of his yeshivot and gave his haskama to the Magen Avraham and Turei Zahav printed in Dyhernfurth in 5452/1692. In 5450/1690 he was named rav of the land of Bohemia, seated in Prague, and from 5452/1692 rosh yeshiva of Prague as well; from 5464/1704, with Rav David Oppenheim as av beit din, he remained rosh yeshiva alone. A machloket then broke out over a knotty heter-nisuin question that hung on a medical point then beyond determining. Rav Avraham held to forbid out of doubt; other rabbanim of Prague, joined by the Chacham Tzvi, held to permit. Disliking strife, he accepted the rabbanut of Metz, arriving at the end of 5469/1709, and built a great yeshiva there too. Some years later, in Hamburg for the wedding of his son Moshe, he and the Chacham Tzvi were reconciled at the table of Rav Meshulam Zalman Mirels. Rav Yehonatan Eibeschutz, later called to the same question, ruled with the permitting side but found that on the medical facts Rav Avraham had been right, and wrote of him: if his doubts were such, how much more his certainties.

In 5473/1713 he succeeded Rav Naftali Katz in Frankfurt, where he raised the largest yeshiva of his career and talmidim came in the thousands. In 5475/1715 he issued a takkana of forty rules restricting dress and celebrations, lest the community’s wealth stir the envy of the townspeople. Among his talmidim were Rav Netanel Weil, author of the Korban Netanel; Rav Yonah Landsofer, author of Meil Tzedaka; Rav Yosef Yuspa Kashman, author of Noheg KaTzon Yosef; and his son Rav Moshe Broda, rav of Hanau, Bamberg, and Worms, whose daughter Sarah was the grandmother of Rav Akiva Eiger. He printed nothing in his lifetime; his sons and talmidim later published a small part of his chiddushim — Chiddushei Geonim on Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Sanhedrin, Shema’ta Chadta on Gittin and Ketubot, Eshel Avraham on Pesachim, Gittin, Bava Batra, and Chullin, and Toldot Avraham on Tosafot to Ketubot and Kiddushin — while much else survives only in the sefarim of his contemporaries. He was niftar in Frankfurt after a short illness and was buried in the old Jewish cemetery there, between Rav Yosef Shmuel of Krakow and the Maharshashach.