מאיר שיף

Rav Meir ben Yaakov HaKohen Schiff (c. 5368/1608–21 Adar 5401/1641), the Maharam Schiff, was a rosh yeshiva, dayan, posek and commentator on the Talmud in Germany, known for the sharpness of his learning. He was born in Frankfurt am Main to Rav Yaakov HaKohen Schiff, rosh yeshiva and head of the beit din of the city. In 1622 he was appointed rav and rosh yeshiva of Fulda, where his name spread across Europe and hundreds of talmidim learned in his yeshiva, and where he wrote commentaries that covered the whole Talmud. Shortly before his passing he was called to the rabbanut of Prague, but he was niftar suddenly and young, on motzaei Shabbat, in his father’s lifetime. English sources render his name Meir Schiff.

Chiddushei Halachot Maharam Schiff are the distillation of the shiurim he delivered to his talmidim, and what survives of them is printed on parts of some eleven masechtot, among them Beitzah, Megillah, Ketubot, Gittin, the three Bavot and Chullin. He did not write in notebooks but on loose leaves, and the manuscripts kept in Frankfurt wore away with the years and burned in the great fire of 24 Tevet 5471/1711 — which is why the chiddushim so often lack pages. It appears he wrote for himself rather than for publication: he writes in hints and in extreme brevity, and left his arguments unordered. On his deathbed he charged his daughter Henlah to keep his writings until a younger relative could learn and publish them; the papers were eaten by moths and some were stolen, and her son Michael Stein brought out the remnant, probably in 1737.

In the modern printings of the Gemara four commentators of that period stand together at the back of the volume — the Maharsha, the Maharam, the Maharshal and the Maharam Schiff. Where the Maharshal gives hagahot and short chiddushim and the Maharam explains the plain sense of Tosafot, the Maharam Schiff works less by cross-referencing distant sugyot and more by driving into the local sugya: reading its opening in light of its conclusion, holding the hava amina and the salka daatach against the maskana. Unlike the other three, who take Tosafot as the leading shita when Tosafot rejects Rashi, he labors to uphold Rashi and to explain why Rashi did not hold like Tosafot and why Tosafot did not hold like Rashi — the path later taken by the Pnei Yehoshua and the Magini Shlomo. He was averse to pilpul, and differed openly even with Rashi himself.

The Maharam Schiff’s is not easy to full grasp. Less than a hundred years after the chiddushim appeared, a biur by Rav Mordechai Mardush of Poritzk was already printed alongside them in every edition — a rare thing for a work of that era — and in recent years there appeared Maharam Schiff HaMevoar on part of Ketubot by Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Gordon.