Shapira, Elijah ben Benjamin Wolf
SHAPIRA, ELIJAH BEN BENJAMIN WOLF
SHAPIRA, ELIJAH BEN BENJAMIN WOLF (1660–1712), rabbi, preacher, and halakhist. Elijah studied under his grandfather, Aaron Simeon Shapira, and Abraham Abele *Gombiner. He was the brother-in-law of Jacob *Reischer and of David *Oppenheim. He served as rabbi in Kolin, Bohemia, and from 1702 in Tiktin, resigning this post when he was appointed head of the yeshivah and preacher in his native Prague (though according to some he continued to act as rabbi of Tiktin while in Prague).
Elijah gained renown through his works: Eliyahu Zuta, a short commentary on the Levush of Mordecai b. Abraham *Jaffe, published with the text (Prague, 1689); Eliyahu Rabbah, a more extensive and profound commentary to the same work, published with the Shulḥan Arukh, Oraḥ Ḥayyim (Sulzbach, 1757), to which it served as a kind of supplement; Shishah Shitot me-Ḥiddushei Eliyyah Rabbah on the tractates Ketubbot, Kiddushin, Gittin, Bava Kamma. Bava Batra, and Ḥullin, published in Zurich in 1768. Many of his other works – sermons, novellae, and responsa which had remained in manuscript – were destroyed in the great fire of Prague in 1754.
Shapira died in Prague; his sons were Aryeh Leib, rabbi of Leipen, and Samuel, head of the Prague bet din.
bibliography:
Ch. Tchernowitz, Toledot ha-Posekim, 3 (1947), 185–6; M. Bar-Yuda and Z. Ben-Nachum (eds.), Sefer Tiktin (1959), 74–5.
[Itzhak Alfassi]