ראבי"ה

Rav Eliezer ben Yoel HaLevi (c. 4900/1140–c. 4985/1225), known by his acronym as the Ra’avyah, was one of the Baalei HaTosafot of Germany and the author of Sefer Avi HaEzri. He was born in Bonn into a family of rabbanim and poskim: his father was Rav Yoel HaLevi, rav of Bonn, and his mother’s father was Rav Eliezer ben Nassan, the Ra’avan. His generation was one of persecution and expulsion, and he wandered through many cities of Germany and France — Bonn, Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Würzburg, Speyer, Regensburg and others — living most of his years in Bonn and, in his old age, filling his father’s place in the rabbanut of Cologne.

He learned in his youth from his grandfather the Ra’avan and from other elders of his family, and then in the yeshivot of Mainz under Rav Yehudah ben Kalonymus; he also studied under Rav Yehudah HeChasid and among most of the chachamim of Ashkenaz of that generation. A close bond joined him to Rav Elazar of Worms, the Baal HaRokeach. He gave himself to the needs of the tzibbur and to the redemption of captives, and dealt with the men of government and church. When his brother Uri was killed al kiddush Hashem in 4976/1216, his grief was so great that his sight was harmed, and he was left to dictate his chiddushim to his talmidim.

His major work, Sefer Avi HaEzri — printed under his own name as Sefer Ra’avyah — is a wide collection of rulings and commentary in 1,155 simanim, arranged by the order of the masechtot of the Talmud. He compiled a further work, Sefer Aviasaf, gathering the teachings of his grandfather the Ra’avan, which has not reached us. Much of his psak came down to the later Rishonim through his foremost talmid, Rav Yitzchak of Vienna, author of the Or Zarua, who cites him often. His rulings were among the pillars of hora’ah in Ashkenaz before the Shulchan Aruch, and many of the Shulchan Aruch’s rulings rest upon them. It is told that when the Rosh fled to Spain he carried the Ra’avyah’s sefer with him, before it had yet spread in those lands.