הרב מנוח הענדל

Rabbi Manoach Hendel ben Shemaryah (niftar 22 Tammuz 5371/1611, Vienna) was a rav and posek, a commentator on the Gemara, a grammarian, a mekubal and a man of wide learning, prolific and varied in his writing, who served in his last years as rav of Vienna. He was born in Berestechko in Volhynia; little is known of his early years. He was a talmid of the Rema and of the Maharshal.

In the closing decades of the sixteenth century he was active within the Vaad Arba Aratzot, and his signature is preserved on various decisions the Vaad took; the one haskamah known from him is from 1592, on a sefer concerning the Zohar. As a rav and posek he was drawn into several halachic questions and controversies of his day: among them the question of a get given by an apostate, and the case in which a man who had served as a witness in many divorces was found to be a robber, which disqualified him as a witness and cast a heavy shadow on those divorces — the two other rabbanim asked at the same time were Rabbi Meir of Lublin and Rabbi Binyamin Aharon Slonik, author of Masat Binyamin. About a month before he was niftar he and his colleague Rabbi Yehoshua Falk Katz, the Sema, arranged a get for a woman whose husband lay dangerously ill; afterwards, when the husband recovered and wished to annul it, a controversy broke out over the get that later stirred the Jewish world of Europe.

His writings run to dozens of sefarim, some printed, some lost and some remaining in manuscript, and cover the reading of Tanach and its plain sense, Hebrew grammar, halachah and its interpretation, philosophy, kabbalah, trigonometry, astronomy and medicine. Manoach HaLevavot, printed at Lublin in 5356, his commentary on Chovot HaLevavot, is the one sefer he brought to press himself; Manoach Matza Chen, Prague 5371, is his commentary on Rabbeinu Bachye’s commentary to Bereishit; and Chochmat Manoach, Prague 5372, his glosses and chiddushim on the Talmud Bavli, was published by his son Moshe. His commentary on the Ramak’s Pardes Rimonim was lost, though portions of it survive within the writings of Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, who made use of it. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Rossau.