ISSACHAR BAER BEN TANḤUM

ISSACHAR BAER BEN TANḤUM (1779–1855), Lithuanian rabbi, known popularly as "Berele Bunes," although his family name was Behagaon. Issachar Baer was born in Orla, Poland, but spent his life in Vilna. In 1817 he was appointed moreh ẓedek (scholar in residence) in that city, and delivered discourses on Talmud and halakhah in the bet ha-midrash founded in 1780 and named after Elijah of Vilna. He annotated the commentaries on Alfasi (published in the Vilna (Romm) edition of the Talmud under the title Pe'ullat Sakhir) as well as the Mishnah of the order Zera'im with the commentary of *Samson of Sens, and the Sefer ha-Mitzvot of Maimonides with the criticisms of *Naḥmanides. He is best known for his Ma'aseh Rav, a collection of the religious practices of Elijah of *Vilna (collected by his disciple Saadiah b. Nathan Nata), to which he wrote a commentary also titled Pe'ullat Sakhir. This book, first published in Vilna and Grodno in 1832 by his son Mordecai, gained great popularity and has frequently been republished. A note by Mordecai at the end of Ma'aseh Rav indicates that his father also had written novellae which had not been published. Issachar Baer frequently gave *haskamot to rabbinical works.

bibliography:

H.N. Maggid (Steinschneider), Ir Vilna, 1 (1900), 41–48; S.J. Fuenn, Kiryah Ne'emanah (1915), 215, 277f.; J.L. Maimon (ed.), Sefer ha-Gra, 1 (1953), 341f.; B. Landau, Ha-Ga'on he-Ḥasid mi-Vilna (1965), 323ff., 328–30; idem, Hashlamot ve-Tikkunim … (1967), 384f.

[Abraham David]