הרב אלעזר פלקלס

Rav Elazar Fleckeles (28 Av 5514/1754 – 20 Nisan 5586/1826), known in English sources as Eleazar Fleckeles, was rosh beit din of Prague and the closest talmid of Rav Yechezkel Landau, the Noda BiYehudah. He was born in Prague to Reb David, of a family that traced its descent from the Maharal of Prague and from the author of the Kli Yakar. He learned two years under Rav Meir Fischels and ten more under the Noda BiYehudah, and at seventeen married Esther Bondi, of a wealthy and distinguished house. Both families supported him so that his years could go to learning, and in his sefarim he writes often of how much his wife gave to his Torah and bore with his wanderings.

In 5539/1778 he was received as av beit din of Kojetein in Moravia, where his kehillah held him dear. After some four years he wanted the company of talmidei chachamim to learn with, and on his rebbe’s counsel he returned to his birth city in 5543/1783 to sit as a dayan in the beit din of the Noda BiYehudah. In 5561/1801, when Rav Michael Bachrach the head dayan was niftar, the headship of the beit din came to him, and he held it together with his rebbe’s son Rav Shmuel Landau. Several of Prague’s batei midrash took him as their rav, and questions reached him from far past the city.

The parnassim (wealthy) of his kehillah challenged his leadership over his firmness, above all his stand against the remnants of the Shabtai Tzvi movement, whom he called an accursed sect. In the autumn of 1800 the leaders of Prague resolved to place under cherem the wealthy men of the city who were supporting the daughter of Yaakov Frank. In the disturbances that followed, Rav Elazar, who had delivered a series of sharp drashot against the faction, was thrown into prison. Asked whether one might marry into such a family, he ruled that where the matter was clear it was forbidden outright, even if the daughter herself had not gone in her father’s way. He held that Kabbalah belongs to a learned few and has no place in public hands, and he saw in its spread among the unlearned the root from which those movements had grown; he set down the whole fight in Ahavat David.

His teshuvot were printed as Teshuvah MeAhavah, some 450 rulings set in the order of the Shulchan Aruch; he explained the title as answers written out of love rather than for gain, and as a remez to his own name by gematria. Beside it stand Olat Chodesh, his drashot; Maaseh BeRabbi Elazar on the Haggadah shel Pesach; and Milei D’Avot on Pirkei Avot. He was niftar after an illness on 20 Nisan 5586, during Pesach, and was laid to rest in the Žižkov cemetery in Prague, beside his rebbe; his grandson Rav Yom Tov Spitz printed an early account of his life, Zichron Elazar.