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the Maharal of Prague
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, alt. Loewe, Löwe, or Levai, (c. 1520 – 17 September 1609) widely known to scholars of Judaism as the Maharal of Prague, or simply The MaHaRaL, the Hebrew acronym of "Moreinu Ha-Rav Loew," ("Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew") was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, and philosopher who, for most of his life, served as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulov in Moravia and Prague in Bohemia. Within the world of Torah and Talmudic scholarship, he is known for his works on Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism and his work Gur Aryeh al HaTorah, a supercommentary on Rashi's Torah commentary. The Maharal is the subject of a nineteenth-century legend that he created a golem, an artificial anthropoid fashioned from clay, to defend the Jewish community of Prague against their persecutors. (via wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Loew_ben_BezalelPrimary sources in open-source Judaism: Rabbi Yitsḥoq Hutner’s Paḥad Yitzḥoq, Rosh haShanah Ma’amar Bet
Contributed on: 23 Oct 2015 by ❧
In our continuing effort to expose the foundations of Open Source Judaism in Jewish source texts, we have made a transcription of Rabbi Ally Ehrman’s shiur (lesson) explaining Rabbi Yitsḥoq Hutner’s ראש השנה מאמר ב “Rosh Hashana Ma’amar 2” (circa 1950s) published in Paḥad Yitsḥoq, (a compendium of Rabbi Hutner’s teachings from the 1950s until his death in 1983). The ma’amar is an explication of the verse in Proverbs and familiar to anyone that sings Eyshet Ḥayil before the Sabbath evening meal, “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and a loving-kind Torah is on her tongue,” (Proverbs 31:26). The ma’amar weaves ideas by the Maharal from Gevurot Hashem (6:4) commenting on the gemarah in Talmud Bavli Sukkah 49b that the meaning of Torat Ḥesed (loving-kind torah) is a torah learned with the intention of being retransmitted. Via the MaHaRaL, Rabbi Hutner teaches that this effort in giving is an act of loving-kindness whereby a new work is made freely and shared completely without any diminution of the source, the giver, or the recipient. . . .
