מנחם ממירזבורק

Rabbi Menachem ben Pinchas of Merseburg (מנחם ממירזבורק) was a rishon of Ashkenaz at the close of the era of the rishonim. He is also called Rabbi Menachem Meil Tzedek, or Rabbi Menachem HaMeili, after his sefer Meil Tzedek. His takkanot (communal enactments) were accepted by the generations after him.

He learned from Rabbi Yitzchak of Oppenheim and from another talmid chacham named Rabbi Shlomo. He was one of the remaining talmidei chachamim of Ashkenaz who rebuilt the Jewish communities of Germany after the massacres of 1348–1349 that came with the Black Death (the Plague). Among his talmidim was Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann.

The Mahariv, Rabbi Yaakov Weil, writes of him in his teshuvot (siman 133) as an outstanding lamdan, one of the greatest of his generation, and says that the whole of Saxony followed the customs of his sefer. The Maharshal writes that he put up fences and safeguards for the Torah and that his takkanot and decrees spread through all of Ashkenaz. Rabbi Yehudah Mintz also mentions him.

He is best known for ending the practice of mi’un, by which a girl married off while still a minor could annul the marriage once she grew up. He did not make this takkanah on his own authority: he turned to a talmid chacham named Rabbi Baruch, most likely of Tzarfat, whom he called “the great one of our generation,” and asked him to enact it. Fifty years later this led to the dispute over mi’un in the time of Rabbi Yaakov Pollak. His sefer Meil Tzedek held several hundred simanim, drawn mostly from the rulings and teshuvot of earlier poskim; most of it has been lost. His halachic notes, Nimukei Rabbi Menachem, on the laws of marriage, monetary law and the taxing of the communities, were printed as an appendix to the teshuvot of the Mahariv in Hanau in 1630.

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