Ketzot HaChoshen — Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller הקצות החושן — רבי אריה לייב הלר

Rabbi Aryeh Leib HaKohen Heller was born about 1745 at Kalisz and died in 1812. He was rabbi at Rozhnyatov, taught at Lemberg, and from 1788 was rabbi of Stryj, where he kept a large yeshiva.

Ketzot HaChoshen is a commentary on Choshen Mishpat of the Shulchan Aruch: the first part appeared at Lvov in 1788, the second in 1796. In genre it is a commentary; in substance, legal theory.

The change he made matters more than any single book. Before him a commentator harmonised the opinions he received. Heller builds **abstract concepts** — and derives rulings from them. His Shev Shema'teta (1804), seven treatises on halakhic doubt, is the purest expression of that cast of mind and is still learned separately in the yeshivas. From him a straight line runs to the lamdanut of the nineteenth century and to Brisk, with one substantial difference: Heller cared for the elegance of the reasoning, the Gaon and the Briskers for the original sense of the text.

Two cautions. Avnei Milluim is his own book, not his brother's; to his brother, Rabbi Yehuda Kahana, belongs the Kuntres ha-Sefekot. And: though he had no sympathy for Chasidism, the Chasidic rebbes honoured him — the Ketzot crossed a border that polemic did not.