רא"ם

Rabbi Eliezer ben Shmuel of Metz (c. 4900/1140–4997/1237), known by the acronym the Ra’am and in English sources as Eliezer of Metz, was one of the Baalei HaTosafot and the author of Sefer Yereim. He learned before Rabbeinu Tam and the Rashbam, and out of his own beit midrash came Rabbi Elazar of Worms, author of the Sefer HaRokeach; the Ravyah, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yoel HaLevi of Bonn and Cologne; Rabbi Baruch ben Shmuel of Mainz; and Rabbi Simchah ben Shmuel of Speyer. Having learned from the rabbanim of Tzarfat and taught the leading chachamim of Ashkenaz in the generation that followed, he is an important link between the two centers of Torah.

He sat in judgment already in the presence of his rebbe Rabbeinu Tam, before he moved to the city of Metz. For a time he dealt in the lending of money, as one of his teshuvot on the subject shows, and it is told of him that he served as a gabbai tzedakah. Sorrow marked his later years: his daughters were niftar in his lifetime and he seems to have had no sons, and at the close of his sefer he writes that Sefer Yereim would have to stand as his remembrance, that his good had been gathered up and spent, and that he was left alone with none to hold him up.

Sefer Yereim sets out the laws of the mitzvot following the reckoning of Rav Yehudai Gaon, together with matters of mussar and derech eretz, and divides the mitzvot into seven “pillars,” each holding one class of mitzvah. An abridgment of it was made by Rabbi Binyamin ben Avraham Anav. Beside it he wrote tosafot on Berachot, Shabbat, Pesachim, Nedarim, Zevachim, Chullin, and Nazir; in the printed Tosafot on Shabbat, the questions he put to his rebbe the Rashbam are preserved together with the answers he received.