Moses ben Isaac Judah Lima (c. 1615 – c. 1670) was a
Lithuanian rabbinical scholar, one of the
Acharonim
In Jewish law and history, ''Acharonim'' (; he, אחרונים ''Aḥaronim''; sing. , ''Aḥaron''; lit. "last ones") are the leading rabbis and poskim (Jewish legal decisors) living from roughly the 16th century to the present, and more specifi ...
.
When a comparatively young man he successively occupied the rabbinates of
Brest-Litovsk
Brest ( be, Брэст / Берасьце, Bieraście, ; russian: Брест, ; uk, Берестя, Berestia; lt, Brasta; pl, Brześć; yi, בריסק, Brisk), formerly Brest-Litovsk (russian: Брест-Литовск, lit=Lithuanian Br ...
and
Slonim
Slonim ( be, Сло́нім, russian: Сло́ним, lt, Slanimas, lv, Sloņima, pl, Słonim, yi, סלאָנים, ''Slonim'') is a city in Grodno Region, Belarus, capital of the Slonimski rajon. It is located at the junction of the Ščar ...
. His fame as a scholar soon reached
Vilna, whither he was called, in 1650, to fill the office of chief rabbi. Lima was of a retiring and diffident disposition, which probably accounts for the paucity of his writings. He left a manuscript commentary on ''
Shulchan Aruch
The ''Shulchan Aruch'' ( he, שֻׁלְחָן עָרוּך , literally: "Set Table"), sometimes dubbed in English as the Code of Jewish Law, is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Judaism. It was authored in Safed (today in ...
,'' ''Eben Ha-Ezer'', which his son Raphael published (1670) under the title of ''Ḥelḳat Meḥoḳeḳ'', and which, while betraying profound erudition, was so condensed that the editor deemed it necessary to provide it with explanatory notes. Lima did not carry even this work to completion; it covers only the first 126 chapters of the ''Eben Ha-Ezer''.
Bibliography
*
Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography
*
Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, i. and ii., s.v. Ḥelḳat Meḥoḳeḳ;
*S. Bäck, in Winter and Wünsche, Die Jüdische Litteratur, ii. 519;
*
Gans, Ẓemaḥ Dawid, p. 596;
*Grätz, Gesch. x. 61 et seq.;
*Jost, Gesch. des Judenthums und Seiner Sekten, iii. 244.
1615 births
1670 deaths
17th-century Lithuanian rabbis
Rabbis from Vilnius
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