The Taz — Rabbi David HaLevi Segal הט"ז — רבי דוד הלוי סגל

Rabbi David HaLevi Segal was born at Volodymyr-Volynskyi in 1586 and died in Lwów in 1667. He studied under his elder brother Isaac and married the daughter of the Bach. His rabbinates: Potylicz, then some twenty years at Poznań, from 1641 Ostroh, from 1654 Lwów, where he kept a yeshiva.

Turei Zahav is not a line-by-line gloss on the Shulchan Aruch but an argument with it: he conducts the discussion through the Tur, the Talmud and its commentators, and returns Karo to his own sources. Yoreh De'ah appeared at Lublin in 1646, the other parts posthumously, down to Even ha-Ezer in 1754. Together with the Shach, the Taz became one of the two commentaries by which the Shulchan Aruch is learned to this day.

In 1648 he fled to the fortress of Ulick and saw what happened there. Two sons, Mordechai and Shlomo, were killed — not in 1648, as is often written, but in the Lwów riot of 1664.

The last thing in his life was Shabbetai Tzvi. To Shabbetai himself the Taz did **not** travel: he sent his son Yeshayahu and his stepson Aryeh Leib, who returned enthusiastic, and he seems to have believed them. He died in February 1667, a few months after Shabbetai accepted Islam.