הרב יום טוב ליפמן הלר

Rav Gershon Shaul Yom Tov Lipmann HaLevi Heller (5339/1579–6 Elul 5414/1654), known for all generations as the Tosfot Yom Tov after his peirush on the Mishnah, was among the greatest chachamim of Ashkenaz and Poland in the generation before tach v’tat. He was born in Wallerstein in Bavaria; his father, Rav Nosson, was niftar before his birth, and he was raised by his grandfather, Rav Moshe. After learning in Friedberg under Rav Yaakov Ginzburg he came to Prague and became one of the foremost talmidim of the Maharal, learning as well from the Kli Yakar; besides his breadth in Shas and poskim he occupied himself with kabbalah, philosophy, and dikduk, and acquired a wide command of mathematics, astronomy, and the natural sciences. At eighteen he was appointed a dayan in Prague, a position he held some twenty-eight years.

In Cheshvan 5385/1624 he was called to the rabbanut of Nikolsburg, and within months to Vienna as av beit din, where he gathered the city’s scattered Jews into an organized kehillah in Leopoldstadt and drew up its takanot. In Tevet 5387/1627 he was chosen rav of Prague, and soon after rosh yeshiva — but his enemies within the city, angered by the assessment he and his commission had laid upon the wealthy to meet the crushing war levy on the kehillah, denounced him to the Emperor Ferdinand II, charging that his sefarim degraded the ruling faith. In the summer of 5389/1629 he was imprisoned in Vienna and sentenced to death; after intercession the sentence was commuted to an enormous fine of ten thousand thalers, which took him two years to pay off, and he was barred from the rabbanut there. He fixed 5 Tammuz, the day his troubles began, as a fast day for his descendants, and set down the whole story in his Megillat Eivah, which his descendants read to this day.

In 5391/1631 he crossed into Poland, serving in Nemirov and then in Ludmir, and stood among the leaders of the Vaad Arba Aratzot, where in 5400/1640 he fought to renew the old cherem against the buying of rabbanut positions for money; informers rose against him again, and a decree of expulsion from Ludmir was annulled through the efforts of the community. In 5404/1644 he was crowned av beit din of Krakow, and after the passing of Rav Yehoshua Heschel, the Maginei Shlomo, he headed its yeshiva as well. He led Krakow through the gezeirot of tach v’tat, laboring long in the hetter of the agunot of the gezeirot; he taught that the churban had come for the sin of idle talk in shul, and instituted a Mi Shebeirach for those careful to keep silent during the tefillah. The first of Adar, the day of his appointment in Krakow, he fixed as a day of celebration for his descendants until the coming of the Go’el.

His name stands on the Tosfot Yom Tov (originally Tosefet Yom Tov), printed in 5374–5377/1614–1617: a peirush on the entire Mishnah that distills the discussion of the Bavli and Yerushalmi and completes and weighs the words of the Bartenura, beside which it has been printed ever since — whole, or in the abridged Ikar Tosfot Yom Tov found in most editions of the Mishnayot. Beside it stand his works on the piskei HaRosh — Ma’adanei Yom Tov and Divrei Chamudot, first titled Ma’adanei Melech and Lechem Chamudot, and Pilpula Charifta on Seder Nezikin — along with piyutim on the deliverance of Prague Jewry in the Thirty Years’ War and on the gezeirot of tach v’tat, a work on the form and measures of the Beit HaMikdash, and more. He was niftar in Krakow and rests in its old Jewish cemetery.