מאיר אוירבך

Rav Meir Auerbach (30 Shevat 5575/1815–5 Iyar 5638/1878), known as the Imrei Binah after his sefer, was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Yerushalayim and one of the builders of the new yishuv. Born in Dobra in Poland to its rav, of the great Auerbach rabbinic family, he was rav of his native town at twenty-five, of Kovel for seven years, av beit din of Kolo for nine, and from 5615/1855 rav of Kalisz — where he also prospered in commerce, and where his derashot returned again and again to the yishuv of Eretz Yisrael as “the beginning of the geulah.”

In 5619/1859 he lived his own derashah: he went up to Yerushalayim, intending, as he wrote, to sit alone in the four amot of halachah in the city Hashem chose. Yerushalayim had other plans. Rav Shmuel Salant placed him at the head of the Ashkenazi rabbanut, and for eighteen years the two led the community as one — Rav Meir refusing all salary, living from his own wealth and pouring it into the city. With Rav Salant he founded the Vaad HaKlali in 5626/1866, the first umbrella of all the kollelim; he stood at the head of the Etz Chaim institutions, was among the founders of the Bikur Cholim hospital and of the Yeshuot Yaakov shul, and helped purchase the ground on which Mea Shearim rose. He answered the slanders against the yishuv in an open letter to Montefiore, gave his haskamah to Rav Kalischer’s Moznayim LaMishpat — while reserving judgment on the renewal of korbanot — and headed a society that sought, before its time, to purchase the lands of Yericho.

His takanah, that no instrumental music be played at weddings in Yerushalayim &mdash was the practice known as Minhag Yerushalayim, upheld by the Maharil Diskin and Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and kept by many to this day, drums alone marking the simchah of a city that remembers the churban. His Imrei Binah on the Shulchan Aruch remains a deep work of psak learned by poskim. He was niftar on 5 Iyar 5638 and rests on Har HaZeitim.