The Shach — Rabbi Shabbetai HaKohen הש"ך — רבי שבתי הכהן

Rabbi Shabbetai HaKohen was born in 1621 near Vilkaviškis and died on 1 Adar at Holešov in Moravia; the sources give 1662 or 1663 (the Hebrew date falls in February 1663). He studied under Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel and lived in Vilna.

Siftei Kohen on Yoreh De'ah he printed at Kraków in 1646, at twenty-five. From 1674 it is printed beside the text of the code. Later he wrote a Siftei Kohen on Choshen Mishpat as well.

In that same year 1646 the Taz on Yoreh De'ah appeared — and the two commentaries met. The Shach's answer to the Taz is Nekudot ha-Kesef, printed posthumously in 1677. In most cases the rabbis of Poland and Lithuania ruled with the Shach.

There is a difference deeper than particular disputes. The whole generation before him — Maharshal, the Bach, the Sma — argued with the code; the Shach is the first to **defend** Karo and to seek to justify him. With him the Shulchan Aruch ceases to be a target and becomes the frame within which the arguing goes on.

Megillat Eifah, the "Scroll of Darkness," is his short chronicle and selichot on the massacres of 1648–49, including his account of the fifteen hundred killed at Uman; the fast of the 20th of Sivan among Polish Jews is associated with him. In 1655 he fled Vilna with the whole community before the Muscovite invasion: Lublin, Prague, Strážnice, and finally Holešov, where he was rabbi until his death and where his grave is visited still.