הרב שלמה קלוגר

Rav Shlomo Kluger (5546/1785–30 Sivan 5629/1869), known as the Maharshak and as the Maggid of Brody, was among the leading poskim of Galicia in the nineteenth century. He was born in Komarow to Rav Yehuda Aharon Kluger, the av beis din of the town, and was writing chiddushei Torah as a young child. Orphaned of his father at thirteen, he moved to Zamosc, where he learned under Rav Yosef Hochgelernter and then under Rav Yaakov Kranz, the Maggid of Dubno, who drew him toward aggadah and the machshava sefarim of the Rishonim.

After his marriage he was reluctant to earn his living from Torah and tried his hand at commerce; when that failed he accepted the rabbanut, serving in Kulikov, then in Yozefov, and from 5580/1820 as Maggid Meisharim in Brody. Called to Brezhan in 1845, he fell gravely ill there and vowed that if he recovered he would return to Brody — which he did, remaining as dayan and maggid of the town.

Rav Kluger wrote some one hundred and fifty works across every area of Torah, with responsa numbering in the thousands — among them Sefer HaChaim, Tuv Taam VaDaas, and the responsa HaElef Lecha Shlomo. He stood firmly against the Haskalah and, in a well-known dispute, against machine-made matzah, which he held might carry the status of chametz — a position he argued with Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson, who permitted it; when Rav Kluger later concluded that he had been given an inaccurate account of how the machines worked, he adjusted his ruling accordingly.

He was niftar in Brody on 30 Sivan 5629, after more than fifty years as its dayan and maggid; his Chochmas Shlomo on the Shulchan Aruch is printed in the standard editions and cited by poskim today.