ר' מנחם בן זרח

Rabbi Menachem ben Aharon ibn Zerach (c. 5070/1310 – 5145/1385) was a rishon who acted in Spain in the fourteenth century, the author of Tzeidah LaDerech. His father Aharon was among those expelled from France in 5066/1306 and settled at Estella in Navarre, where five children were born to him, Menachem among them. In the killings there in 5088/1328 the whole family was slain but for Menachem, who lay wounded among the dead until a horseman, a friend of his father’s house, drew him out, brought him to his home and had his wounds healed. At sixteen he married the daughter of Rabbi Binyamin Aviz, who taught Torah in public.

When he recovered he went to learn in Toledo under Rabbi Yehoshua ibn Shuaib and Rabbi Yehudah son of the Rosh — his principal rebbi, who went through the whole of Shas with him excepting the third and fourth orders — and at Alcala under Rabbi Yosef ibn al-Aish, whom he succeeded as rav of that community, holding the position eight years and teaching Gemara there. In the civil war between the sons of Alfonso his property was plundered and he was left with almost nothing, until Don Shmuel Abravanel, grandfather of Don Yitzchak Abravanel, came to his aid and had him appointed rav and rosh yeshivah in Toledo. He signed his letters “Menachem the Frenchman.”

He wrote Tzeidah LaDerech in gratitude to Abravanel, who was much occupied in affairs of the kingdom and had little leisure for the Gemara and the poskim. The sefer is divided into five parts — tefillot and berachot, the laws of forbidden and permitted foods, the laws of women, Shabbat and yom tov, and the fasts and the laws of mourning — corresponding to the divisions of the Tur, and closes with a discourse on the coming of Mashiach. It was written for those whose station and dealings with the wider world made them less careful in observance, and so sets out the essential laws rather than the whole; he was not content to state the halachot alone but gave the reason behind them, drawing out the religious sense of what is done. His introduction traces the course of halachah from the sealing of the Mishnah to his own day and takes to task those of the philosophers of his generation who made light of it. He wrote as well an abridgement of Chovot HaLevavot, meant so that one shaar might be read on each of the aseret yemei teshuvah. Tzeidah LaDerech was first printed at Ferrara in 5314/1554. He was niftar at Toledo, where his matzevah records him as the son of the martyred Rabbi Aharon.