Magen Avraham — Rabbi Avraham Gombiner המגן אברהם — רבי אברהם גומבינר

Rabbi Avraham Gombiner was born at Gąbin about 1637 and died at Kalisz in 1682; both dates float by two or three years in the sources.

He lost his parents in the massacres: the Encyclopaedia Judaica places their death in 1648, other sources in 1655, during the Deluge. As a boy he was taken in by a kinsman; then Kalisz, where he headed the yeshiva and sat as a judge.

Magen Avraham is a commentary on Orach Chaim of the Shulchan Aruch — the laws of prayer, Sabbath and festival: the division that touches every Jew every day. Written about 1665–1671, it was printed only in 1692, a decade after the author's death, by his son Chaim.

Its design is reconciliation: to bring Karo's ruling together with the Rema's gloss, and at the same time to give place to Polish custom and to the kabbalistic authorities, the Ari and the Shelah. That is precisely why men rule by it: it says not "what is correct in general" but "what is done here, and why it is lawful."

He writes with extreme concision — scholars long puzzled over his meaning until Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi Kolin wrote Machatzit ha-Shekel, a commentary upon the commentary. With the Taz, Magen Avraham became one of the two pillars of Orach Chaim, and on it stand both the Mishnah Berurah and the Arukh HaShulchan.