הרב אברהם דנציג

Rav Avraham Danzig (5508/1748–4 Tishrei 5581/1820), known by his classic Chayei Adam, was among the leading poskim of Lithuania in the generation before the Mishnah Berurah. Born in the city of Danzig to Rav Yechiel Michel, he learned in his youth under Rav Yosef Liberman of Prague, and from around the age of eighteen under the Noda BiYehuda, Rav Yechezkel Landau. He then settled in Vilna, where for years he earned his living as a merchant and served the community as a rav without pay, holding to the ideal of not drawing benefit from the Torah; only after losing his means around 5570/1810 did he formally take up the post of rav and dayan there.

He came into family ties with the household of the Vilna Gaon when his son Rav Yitzchak married a granddaughter of the Gra, and his admiration for the Gaon runs through his writing — though in Chayei Adam he differs with him in several places, and in the preface to Chochmat Adam he notes that many objected, so that in that work he refrained from citing the Gaon’s words. He received haskamot from a number of rabbis, among them his friend Rav Avraham Avli Posveler of Vilna, who helped edit Chochmat Adam, and Rav Chaim of Volozhin, who — despite his reservations about digests of halacha — gave his approbation on the condition that each section be keyed to the Shulchan Aruch so that a learner could study further.

His Chayei Adam, an ordered summary of the halachot of Orach Chaim written for the educated layman, became possibly the most used halachic handbook of Eastern Europe until the Mishnah Berurah spread; in town after town chaburot gathered to learn it, and some kehillot even built a “Chayei Adam” kloyz. Alongside it he wrote Nishmat Adam for the deeper analysis, Chochmat Adam and Binat Adam on Yoreh De’ah, and works such as Zichru Torat Moshe and Matzevet Moshe, named for a son who was niftar at twenty. After a gunpowder fire near his home killed many while his family was spared, he fixed a private day of thanks he called “Pulverpurim.” He was niftar at seventy-three and buried in the Shnipishok cemetery of Vilna, where the Gra too lies.