Maharal of Prague המהר"ל מפראג
thinker and rabbi of Prague, hero of the Golem legend
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel served as rabbi of Mikulov, Poznań and finally Prague — capital of Rudolf II's empire, a city of astronomers, alchemists and printers. He lived nearly a hundred years.
His books — «Gevurot Hashem», «Tiferet Yisrael», «Netzach Yisrael», «Derech Chaim» — are neither commentaries nor codes but sustained thought about what the people of Israel, the Torah, exile and redemption actually are. He reads the aggadah of the Talmud not as fable but as a language of concepts. His influence runs from Hasidism to Rav Kook.
He attacked the schooling of his day: children were drilled in dialectics before they grasped the plain meaning, and taught Talmud before Tanakh and Mishnah. He demanded teaching by age and in order.
The legend of the Golem, the clay man he is said to have animated with a divine name to protect the community from blood libel, took shape only in the nineteenth century, yet it stuck, because it matches the man: a scholar standing between a defenceless community and the mob. He died in 5369.