Gur aryeh (The Lion’s Whelp): On Rashi’s Commentary on the Pentateuch

Judah Loew

1578

“R. Isaac said, etc.” In Genesis Rabbah it says: “Even though there is not a single superfluous narrative in the Torah—not even ‘the sister of Lotan was Timna’”—for it says in Sanhedrin Chapter ḥelek that the word “Torah” applies only to the commandments of the Torah, inasmuch as the etymology of “Torah” is from hora’ah [“instruction”], i.e., to…

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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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