יצחק בן אשר הלוי

Rav Yitzchak ben Asher HaLevi of Speyer, known as the Riba, is regarded as the first of the baalei Tosafot of Ashkenaz. In his youth he learned under Rav Yitzchak ben Yehuda, one of Rashi’s own teachers, who was niftar in 4830/1070 — placing his birth around 4810/1050 — and he became a talmid of Rav Yitzchak HaLevi and of Rashi himself. A letter shows he was still alive in 4863/1103, and there is evidence he was no longer living by 4893/1133. The famed chachamim of his generation, such as the Raavan, held him in great esteem and turned to him with questions, and his talmidim called him “kadosh” — not because he was killed al kiddush Hashem, for he was niftar naturally, but because of the prishut with which he conducted himself. Of his passing it is told that he lay ill on Yom Kippur, and the doctors said that if he would eat he might live; he chose to fast, and was niftar.

His chief work was his tosafot on the Talmud, written to most of Shas. No complete collection of them survives on its own, but they became the foundation of the later collections: his name appears hundreds of times in the printed Tosafot, above all on Shabbat and Pesachim, and his tosafot traveled to Provence, Spain, and Italy — the Yad Ramah on Sanhedrin draws on his tosafot to that masechta throughout. He also wrote collections of halachic rulings arranged by masechta, among them on hilchot ribbit, hilchot niddah, and piskei Chullin, as well as a commentary on the Torah that is no longer extant, cited in the Minchat Yehudah and used by Rabbeinu Tam in his Sefer HaYashar.

From his circle in Speyer the whole movement of the baalei Tosafot began to grow: tosafot are cited that were “founded before the Riba HaLevi,” written under his guidance in his beit midrash, and his talmidim — among them Rav Efraim of Regensburg, Rav Yitzchak ben Mordechai, a dayan in Regensburg, and Rav Shmaryah ben Mordechai of Speyer — carried the work onward; the Ri HaLavan, later a talmid of Rabbeinu Tam, learned in his beit midrash as well. Beside his learning he engaged in commerce, traveling as far as Russia. Of his two sons, one was Asher, whose son — born on the very day of his grandfather’s passing and named Rav Yitzchak ben Asher after him, “the second Riba” — was killed al kiddush Hashem in Speyer in 4956/1196.