Derekh ha-ḥayim (The Way of Life)

Judah Loew

1589

Avot 5:6: Ten things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight: The mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, the mouth of [Balaam’s] ass, the rainbow, the manna, the rod, the shamir-worm, the letters, the inscription, and the tablets. Some say: Also demons and Moses’s burial-place and Abraham’s ram. Some say: the first tongs by which…

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Creator Bio

Judah Loew

1520–1609

Known as the Maharal of Prague, Judah Loew ben Bezalel spent twenty years as rabbi in Moravia, moving in 1573 to the Bohemian capital, where he established an institution of advanced rabbinic learning, the “Kloyz.” After a brief period as rabbi in Poznań, his likely birthplace, he returned to Prague and served as its rabbi from the late 1590s until his death. Judah Loew proposed educational reform emphasizing students’ structured progression to gradually more complex texts and opposed casuistry (pilpul) in Talmud study. After his death, he came to be viewed as the legendary creator of a Golem, a creature animated from clay, and as spiritual father of some Hasidic circles.

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