Judah ben Bezalel, known as Rabbi Löw (1512–1609), was a rabbi, Talmudist and thinker who worked mainly in Prague. Legend associates him with the golem, and history also records him as a teacher with pedagogical principles of his own.
Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also called the High Rabbi Löw or, by the acronym, the MaHaRaL, lived from 1512 to 1609. He was a rabbi, Talmudist, astronomer and mathematician and worked mainly in Prague.[1]
Life
His family came from Worms.[1] He was probably born in Poznań.[2] For a long time he was a private scholar in Poznań, and from 1553 to 1573 he served in Mikulov as provincial rabbi. He then headed a Talmudic school that stood where the Klausen Synagogue in Prague stands today.[1] In 1592 he was apparently received by Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, for a confidential conversation at Hradčany.[1] In the same year he became chief rabbi in Poznań, and in 1597 he returned to Prague as chief rabbi. He died there, and his grave is in the Old Jewish Cemetery.[1] Later accounts say that he grew close to the emperor through a shared interest in alchemy and the Kabbalah.[2]
Thought
As a Renaissance figure, he engaged with several areas of traditional Jewish learning and of the science of his time. In his Hebrew writings he devoted himself to the interpretation of the Talmudic aggadah. His work contains philosophical elements, but he was not a pure philosopher himself; he rejected Aristotelian philosophy wherever its conclusions contradicted Judaism. The Kabbalah had a great influence on him, although he did not use its special terminology.[1]
He understood God as the foundation of all being and the Torah as an expression of the highest divine reason, which gives the world its order. He saw man as a being created as a microcosm that keeps developing. In his view society should be governed by the principle of peace, and all nations should be free, because the oppression of one nation by another is contrary to the divine order. The same holds for Israel, whose exile from its original homeland cannot last for ever.[1] His ethics are close to Hasidism, and he is regarded as its forerunner.[1]
Pedagogical principles
He proposed a reform of teaching that recalls the somewhat later principles of John Amos Comenius. Education should be logical and clear, proceed from the simpler to the more complex and take account of the abilities of pupils.[1] The teacher should go from the known to the unknown, using examples, stories and fairy tales connected with the children's experience. Pupils should understand the material rather than learn it by heart, teaching should proceed in a playful way, and pupils should be motivated by love of wisdom.[2] Most of his textbooks have not survived, because they burned in 1689 in a fire in the Prague ghetto.[2]
Works
He intended to write six aggadic commentaries on the Jewish festivals, which would bear the names of the first six sefirot, but he completed only three: Gevurot ha-Shem (1582) on Passover, Tiferet Yisrael (1599) on Shavuot and Netzach Yisrael (1600) on Tisha B'Av. Loosely associated with them are the studies Or chadash (1600) on the festival of Purim and Ner mitzvah (1600) on Hanukkah.[1] His ethical writings include Derech chayim (1589), a commentary on the tractate Pirkei Avot, and Netivot olam (1595). The summit of his work is Be'er ha-golah (1600), which defends the methods of the midrash. He also wrote the rules for the Prague burial society, the chevra kadisha.[1]
Students and legend
His notable students included David Gans, Lipmann Heller and Shabbetai Sheftel ben Akiva Horowitz.[1] Later generations nevertheless knew him mainly through the legends of the golem and other Prague tales, and today he is called the legendary creator of the Golem.[1][2]