Moses Isserles
Who was Moses Isserles?
Polish rabbi
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Moses Isserles (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Moses Isserles, or Rema, was born on February 22, 1530, in Kraków, Poland, into a wealthy and scholarly family. His father, Israel Isserles, was a well-known community leader, and his mother was the sister of Rabbi Joseph Shalom. This background immersed Moses in Jewish education from a young age. He studied under Rabbi Shalom Shachna of Lublin, a leading Talmudic authority at the time, and later married Shachna's daughter, linking two of the most important rabbinic families in Polish Jewry. Moses also studied in Lublin before settling back in Kraków, where he spent the rest of his life.
Before Fame
Moses Isserles grew up when Jewish communal and intellectual life was thriving in Poland, especially in Kraków, a major hub for Ashkenazic scholarship. His family's wealth protected him from the financial struggles that many scholars faced, enabling him to study full-time and later establish his own yeshiva. His education under Rabbi Shalom Shachna of Lublin immersed him in the rigorous Talmudic tradition of Polish Jewry, providing him with the technical skills needed for his own legal scholarship.
Key Achievements
- Authored the Mappah, a set of glosses integrating Ashkenazic legal custom into the Shulchan Aruch, making that code authoritative for Ashkenazic Jews worldwide
- Wrote Darkhei Moshe, a major commentary on the Arba'ah Turim that preserved Ashkenazic legal opinion and sources
- Composed Torat ha-Olah, a philosophical reinterpretation of the Temple service using Maimonidean and Aristotelian thought
- Founded and maintained a major yeshiva in Kraków at his own expense, training a generation of Polish rabbis
- Established himself as a leading posek through extensive halakhic correspondence with rabbinic authorities across Europe and the Ottoman Empire
Did You Know?
- 01.A popular Yiddish saying states that from Moses to Moses there was none like Moses, comparing Moses Isserles favorably to Moses Maimonides, separated by roughly four centuries.
- 02.Isserles built the Remuh Synagogue in Kraków around 1553 in memory of his first wife, Golda, who died young, and the adjacent cemetery bearing his name remains an active pilgrimage site.
- 03.During a plague that devastated Kraków in 1552, Isserles temporarily relocated to Szydłów, and the tragedy of losing his wife to illness deeply shaped his personal and intellectual outlook.
- 04.He corresponded directly with Rabbi Joseph Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch, despite the two men representing entirely different geographic and legal traditions, Sephardic and Ashkenazic respectively.
- 05.Isserles defended the study of astronomy and Aristotelian philosophy within a Jewish framework at a time when many contemporaries viewed secular learning as spiritually dangerous.