הרב עקיבא איגר

Rav Akiva Eiger (1 Cheshvan 5522/1761–13 Tishrei 5598/1837), rav of Posen and gadol hador, is the acharon whose very name became a synonym for Talmudic genius: his Torah is learned in the batei midrash of the yeshivot to this day, and his hagahot printed on the gilyon of the Shulchan Aruch, together with his teshuvot, are foundation stones of daily psak and of dayanut. He was born in Eisenstadt, one of the “Seven Communities” of western Hungary, the eldest son of Rav Moshe Ginz and Gittel, daughter of the first Rav Akiva Eiger of Halberstadt, author of Mishnat DeRabbi Akiva, for whom he was named; in time the family took the mother’s distinguished surname, Eiger. At six or seven he untangled a sugya that had long defeated the lomdim of the Breslau yeshiva, and at twelve he went to Breslau himself to become the closest talmid of his uncle, Rav Wolf Eiger.

At about twenty he married Glickl, daughter of the wealthy Itzik Margolis of Lissa, whose support let him sit in learning; there he founded his first yeshiva. In the winter of 5550/1790 his father passed away, and that summer a fire consumed most of the Jewish homes of Lissa, and his father-in-law’s fortune with them. After a period as dayan in Rawicz he accepted, on 18 Adar I 5551/1791, the rabbanut of Markisch-Friedland in West Prussia, which he carried for twenty-four years — though he had long resisted taking a rav’s position at all, asking the community for no more than “the minimum necessary for my subsistence.” There he founded a yeshiva, answered she’eilot from Italy, Germany, Moravia, Poland, and Russia as one of the great poskim of the generation, and established tzedakah funds for the town’s poor, among them a society to supply firewood to warm their homes through the winter.

In 5556/1796 his wife Glickl was niftera, two months after they had led their daughter to the chuppah; his letters from those days pour out a grief to which he traced the stomach ailment that stayed with him for the rest of his life. He later married her niece, Breindel. In the winter of 5573/1812 his widowed daughter Sorel married Rav Moshe Sofer, the Chatam Sofer, rav of Pressburg — his friend and correspondent of years, younger than him by less than a year — and through the Chatam Sofer’s efforts Rav Akiva Eiger was later elected rav of the district city of Posen, where he served twenty-three years, until his last day.

Most of his chiddushim on the Talmud and his notes on the Mishnah and the Shulchan Aruch were written in the Markisch-Friedland years, and his teshuvot from that period are addressed to the rabbanim of the great kehillot of Europe. He was niftar on 13 Tishrei 5598/1837, in the midst of his rabbanut in Posen. His eldest son, Rav Avraham, rav of Rogozin, labored over the editing and printing of his father’s writings, and his son Rav Shlomo Eiger, rav of Kalisz, succeeded him in the rabbanut of Posen.