The Rokeach רוקח

Eleazar ben Judah lived at Worms. In November 1196 his house was attacked: his wife Dulcea and two daughters were killed, his son wounded but alive. He wrote it down himself — a short, terrible and very exact text in which he says of his wife precisely what she did in the community: she taught women, sewed scrolls, and kept the household so that her husband could study.

A correction to the usual retelling is needed here. The killing is almost always ascribed to crusaders "during the Crusade." Research indicates the killers were ordinary robbers, and it did not happen in the course of a crusade. The crusader version formed later.

His chief book is Sefer HaRokeach, in which law is set out interleaved with instruction in piety: a section on repentance, a section on holiness, and beside them the practical laws of the year. The title means "apothecary," and the numerical value of the word matches his name.

He also wrote down the movement's mystical teaching, which before him had been transmitted orally. Kabbalists of Spain and Provence cite him, and through that line Ashkenazi mysticism entered the general tradition.