Mahari Weilמהר"י וייל
Nuremberg · 1405
מוו
Mahari Weil
Mahari Weil
1390 CE–1456 CE · Rishonim · Nuremberg
R. Yaakov ben Yehuda Weil (c. 1390-1456), the Mahari Weil, was the leading German posek of the early 15th century — student of R. Yaakov HaLevi Moelin (the Maharil) and rabbi of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Erfurt. His Sheelot u-Teshuvot Mahari Weil responsa and Hilchot Shechita are foundational texts of Ashkenazi-German halacha; his Hilchot Shechita remains the standard manual for shechita in much of the Ashkenazi world.
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Stop 1 of 21422–1440Rosh Yeshiva
NurembergBavaria (Germany)
What they did here
Ordained by the Maharil, he was appointed to establish a yeshiva in Nuremberg, serving by 1422 as one of the foremost German halachic authorities of his generation.
About Nuremberg
Nuremberg, in Franconia, Bavaria, southern Germany, grew around an imperial castle first mentioned in 1050 and became a Free Imperial City, a frequent seat of imperial diets and keeper of the imperial regalia. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance it was a centre of art, publishing and science, where the astronomer Regiomontanus settled in 1471. Its medieval Jewish community suffered the Rintfleisch massacre of 1298, in which the halakhist Mordechai ben Hillel was killed, and a pogrom in 1349; in the fifteenth century Rabbi Jacob Weil served there and established a yeshiva. The city became Lutheran during the Reformation. In the twentieth century it hosted the Nazi rallies and, after the Second World War, the Nuremberg trials.