הרב משה איסרליש

Rav Moshe Isserles (c. 25 Adar I 5290/1530–18 Iyar 5332/1572), known for all generations as the Rema, was the foremost posek of Ashkenazi Jewry and the author of the Hagah (Mapah) that set Ashkenazi practice upon the page of the Shulchan Aruch. He was born in Kraków to Rav Yisrael Isserl, a great talmid chacham and wealthy leader of the community, and was a descendant of Rav Yechiel Luria, the first rav of Brisk. He learned in Lublin under Rav Shalom Shachna, whose foremost talmid he became and whose daughter he married; among his fellow students were his kinsman Rav Shlomo Luria, the Maharshal, who would later differ with him in many rulings, and a brother of the Maharal.

He returned to Kraków, and in 5312/1552 established a great yeshiva there, supporting its many talmidim from his own means. In his teaching he set himself against pilpul and pressed for the plain understanding of the sugya; in 5313/1553 he was appointed dayan, and questions came to him from across the Torah world, Rav Yosef Karo among those who corresponded with him. His first wife died young, and in her memory he built the shul in Kraków that bears his name to this day.

His life’s work is the Mapah — the “tablecloth” spread upon Rav Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch (the “set table”): glosses that record the rulings and minhagim of Ashkenaz wherever they differ from the Bet Yosef’s Sephardi psak, so that the two together became the received code of the whole Jewish people. Beside it he wrote Darkei Moshe on the Tur, Torat HaChatat on the laws of issur v’heter, and works of machshavah and the hidden Torah.

He was niftar in Kraków on Lag BaOmer, 18 Iyar 5332, at about forty-two; of him it was said, “from Moshe to Moshe there arose none like Moshe.” His Mapah is printed on every Shulchan Aruch and learned in every bet midrash, and his kever in the old Kraków cemetery beside his shul remains a place of tefillah.