דוד לוריא

Rav David ben Yehuda Luria (5558/1798–5 Kislev 5616/1855), the Radal, was among the gedolei Torah of the generation after the Vilna Gaon. He was born in Bykhov, in the Mogilev district, to a wealthy family descended from the Maharshal — a line carried back to Rashi and from him to David HaMelech. At twelve he was sent to learn in Vilna in connection with his shidduch, married at thirteen, and at eighteen returned to Bykhov, where he funded the town’s talmudei Torah and helped establish a yeshiva that he carried financially without standing at its head. A memory of rare power served his life’s work: comparing girsaot across the Talmud and the literature of midrash. At forty he fell victim to a libel — forged letters, and forged passages planted in his peirush on Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, made him out to be calling for revolt against the Czar — and he sat six months in the Shlisselburg fortress before his name was cleared.

In his generation the Radal was known as the continuer of the Gaon’s beit midrash, numbered in the circle of talmidim of the Gaon’s talmidim called “a third mouth to Eliyahu,” and gedolim turned to him as the authority on the Gaon’s manuscripts and mesorot, above all in the hidden Torah. He also carried the burdens of the klal: in 5606/1846 he met Moses Montefiore in Vilna to set before him the state of Russian Jewry, and he came out sharply against the Reformers who sought to alter portions of the siddur.

His haggahot on the Mishnah and on the Talmud Bavli are printed in the Vilna Shas, and beside them stand his biurim on Seder Moed of the Yerushalmi, on Tosefta Uktzin, on Midrash Shmuel, on Pesikta deRav Kahana, and his haggahot on Midrash Rabbah in the Vilna printing; the crown of his work is the great biur and mavo on Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer (Warsaw 5612/1852). In the hidden Torah he wrote Nefesh David on the Zohar and Kadmut Sefer HaZohar, in defense of the Zohar’s antiquity; his haggahot on the She’iltot of Rav Achai Gaon were printed within the Netziv‘s Haamek She’elah, and his teshuvot appeared as Shu”t HaRadal. He was niftar after a difficult illness at fifty-eight, on 5 Kislev 5616/1855.