אליעזר אשכנזי

Rav Eliezer Ashkenazi ben Eliyahu HaRofei (5273/1513–22 Kislev 5346/1585) was a posek, physician, darshan and one of the most independent spirits of his century — a chacham whose wanderings stitched together nearly every great kehillah of the Jewish world. A descendant of the Maharik‘s family, he learned in Salonika under Rav Yosef Taitatzak beside Rav Moshe Alshich — the same beit medrash that raised Rav Shlomo Alkabetz. For some twenty-two years he sat as dayan in Cairo, where his Torah and his wealth made his name; forced out for reasons of state, he served in Famagusta in Cyprus, passed through Venice, and settled in Prague in 5321/1561 — where his is the first signature on the founding charter of the chevra kadisha of Prague, the first of its kind in the world.

His independence was legend. The greatest of his generation — the Beit Yosef, the Rema, the Maharshal — treated him as an equal authority, and he corresponded with Rav Yosef Karo in his years in the East. But he bowed to no consensus he found unconvincing: in Venice and Cremona his rulings set him against the leading rabbanim of Italy, and in Poland he defended the right of chachamim to rule against attempts to restrain them. From Cremona — where he printed Yosef Lekach on Megillat Esther, dedicated to Don Yosef Nasi — he moved to Posen as rav of the city and the district, and ended his days in Krakow, where he was niftar on 22 Kislev 5346 and where his matzeivah was found again centuries later.

His enduring sefer is the Maaseh Hashem (Venice, 5343/1583), a commentary on the narrative portions of the Torah written for the instruction of his son, with a complete peirush on the Haggadah of Pesach that has been printed many times on its own — a work that joins the depth of Sefarad’s last generation to the world of Ashkenaz in which he ended his days. Eight of his selichot entered the rite of the kehillot of Bohemia; his talmidim included Rav Binyamin Aharon Slonik, of the great poskim of Poland.