אפרים מרגנסבורג

Rabbeinu Ephraim ben Yitzchak ben Avraham of Regensburg (c. 4870/1110–4935/1175) was among the baalei Tosafot and one of the leading paytanim of his generation in Germany. He is called Rav Ephraim HaGadol and Rav Ephraim HaGibor, and appears also as Ben Yakir and as Rav Ephraim HaTzarfati. Born in Regensburg, he learned in the yeshiva of the Riva, Rav Yitzchak ben Asher HaLevi, and under Rav Yitzchak ben Mordechai, and in his youth went to France to learn by Rabbeinu Tam, whose early talmid he was. Returning home, he sat on the beit din of Rav Yitzchak ben Mordechai and, together with him and Rav Moshe ben Avraham, established a collegium of rabbanim in the city. Rav Yoel HaLevi of Bonn, father of the Ravyah, was a talmid-chaver of his.

He would not accept the authority of any post-Talmudic ruling whose reason he could not find in the Gemara, in learning or in practice alike, and this brought him into machloket with his own rebbeim and colleagues. After one sharp exchange, Rabbeinu Tam wrote that in all the years he had known him he had never once heard him yield a point — yet he understood that Rav Ephraim’s motives were pure, and would call him affectionately his brother Rav Ephraim. He was forced to leave Speyer after a dispute with Rav Shemaryah of Speyer and Rav Avraham ben Shmuel HeChasid over bread leavened with the lees of gentile wine, and in Worms too he questioned the minhagim of the kehillah.

He wrote Tosafot on a number of masechtot, a kuntres on the laws of grama and garmi, and Arba Panim, apparently chiddushim on Seder Nezikin, along with many teshuvot that the poskim bring. In halachah he is known as the disputant of Rabbeinu Tam on the rule that a piece which has absorbed an issur itself becomes forbidden: Rav Ephraim limited it to mixtures of meat and milk and not to other issurim, and the Shulchan Aruch rules like him while the Rema differs. He also set himself against the practice of the Jews of the Rhineland who permitted the cheilev lying on the stomach, and argued the point with his talmid Rav Yoel, who was of the Rhineland and ate it.

More than thirty of his piyutim survive, among them the selichah for Asarah B’Teivet Avotai Ki Batchu and Asher Yatzar Or for the second Shabbat of Chanukah; their lines carry the sorrows of the gezeirot of Regensburg in 4897/1137 and of the Second Crusade. Best known is Im Afes Rova HaKen on the Akeidah, the one clearly Ashkenazi piyut that entered the Sephardi siddur. He was niftar in Regensburg in 4935/1175 and in all likelihood was buried there.