ר' שמחה מויטרי

Rabbeinu Simchah ben Shmuel of Vitry (niftar after 4865/1105) was among the earliest of the chachmei Tzarfat, a talmid of Rashi, and the compiler of the Machzor Vitry. His town was Vitry-en-Perthois, near Troyes, a place sometimes called Vitra; English works give his name as Simhah of Vitry.

The Machzor Vitry is the largest and most far-reaching of the sefarim that came out of Rashi’s beit midrash: a gathering of halachot and of the order of tefillah through the year, with rulings on practice and teshuvot of Rashi and of other authorities both earlier and contemporary, drawn from the Halachot Gedolot, from the Seder Rav Amram, and from further sources. Rabbeinu Tam’s Sefer HaYashar already names Rabbeinu Simchah as its compiler in the twelfth century, and his grandson Rabbi Yitzchak ben Shmuel speaks of the machzor his grandfather put together. Later hands added to it: notes marked with a ת from Rabbi Yitzchak ben Dorbolo, who in one place writes plainly which explanations are his own and which come from the machzor of Rabbeinu Simchah himself, and additions marked אב״ן from Rabbi Avraham ben Natan, author of HaManhig.

Much of what it holds is found nowhere else — midrashic sayings whose named sources no longer contain them, and citations of the Talmud Yerushalmi absent from our editions. Piyyutim are set throughout it; it carries a peirush on the Haggadah shel Pesach, and a commentary on Pirkei Avot that rests on the work of Rabbi Yaakov ben Shimshon, another talmid of Rashi, expanded here. In it stands the earliest known source for saying l’shanah haba’ah biYerushalayim at the conclusion of the tefillot of Yom Kippur.

His son Shmuel married a daughter of Rabbi Meir ben Shmuel, Rashi’s son-in-law and talmid, and a sister of the Rashbam, Rabbeinu Tam, and the Rivam; their son was Rabbi Yitzchak of Dampierre, the Ri HaZaken, one of the foremost Baalei HaTosafot. The machzor was printed by the Mekitzei Nirdamim society, and issued anew from the manuscripts by Rabbi Aryeh Goldschmidt between 5763/2003 and 5769/2009.