Noda BiYehudah — Rabbi Yechezkel Landau הנודע ביהודה — רבי יחזקאל לנדא

Rabbi Yechezkel Landau was born at Opatów in 1713 and died in Prague in 1793. He was a judge at Brody, rabbi at Yampol, and from 1754–55 until his death rabbi of Prague and of all Bohemia.

Noda BiYehudah is his responsa: the first collection at Prague in 1776, the second posthumously in 1811, some eight hundred and sixty answers in all. There is also Tzelach, novellae on the Talmud, and Dagul me-Revavah, glosses on the Shulchan Aruch.

In 1752, at the height of the quarrel between Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschütz over the amulets, he proposed a settlement: the amulets to be returned, the Sabbatean writings attributed to Eybeschütz to be disavowed, and the amulets themselves perhaps forged. No peace followed, but the composure with which he held himself above the fight made his name — and in good part won him Prague.

The Chasidim he did not accept: he objected to their order of prayer and to kabbalah in unlearned hands, though he knew kabbalah himself and taught it. Against Mendelssohn's German translation of the Torah he spoke not for the quality of the translation but for the language: German is a door, and he saw where it led.

His best-known responsum concerns hunting for sport (Yoreh De'ah, second collection, 10). He successively sets aside both expected prohibitions — cruelty to animals and wanton destruction — and forbids it anyway: the only hunters in Scripture are Nimrod and Esau; and above all, hunting is a deliberate entry into danger, and a man is bound to guard his life. The responsum is interesting precisely because the prohibition turns on a man's character rather than on pity for the beast, and is addressed to a new class of Jewish estate-holders imitating the Polish gentry.