הרב יוסף שאול נתנזון

Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson (5568/1808–27 Adar I 5635/1875), known across the yeshiva world as the Shoel U’Meishiv after his great work of responsa, was rav of Lemberg and among the foremost poskim of Galician Jewry. He was born in Berezhany (Berzan) to Rav Aryeh Leibush Nathanson, author of Beit El, and studied in Lemberg together with his brother-in-law Rav Mordechai Zev Ettinger, with whom he wrote several of his early works. In 5617/1857 he was chosen as rav of Lemberg, a post he held for eighteen years, and his rulings were sought on the pressing sheilot of the day.

A man of private wealth, he took no salary from the kehillah and gave generously to the poor, founding a soup kitchen in the city where he would at times sit and eat among them. His name is bound to the questions of the machine that mixed and rolled matzah: he was among the first to permit its use, and the ruling drew sharp pamphlets against him from those who forbade it. Other rulings of his opened the way for practical matters of a later age — among them a device that kindled a light on Shabbat by itself, and the lighting of a flame on Yom Tov from a match.

His responsa Shoel U’Meishiv, six volumes, stand as a leading halachic authority of his generation. He also wrote Magen Gibborim on Orach Chayim and Ner Maaravi on the Talmud Yerushalmi (both with Rav Ettinger), Yad Shaul on Yoreh De’ah, and Divrei Shaul on the Chumash, the Haggadah, and aggadah. Though he did not belong to the chassidic camp, he kept warm ties with its leaders and gave a haskamah to chassidic sefarim. He was niftar in Lemberg on 27 Adar I 5635, leaving no descendants; he had written close to three hundred approbations to the sefarim of others.