The Bach — Rabbi Yoel Sirkis הב"ח — רבי יואל סירקיש
Bayit Chadash — the return from the code to the source of the law
Rabbi Yoel Sirkis was born in Lublin in 1561 and died in Kraków in 1640. Before Kraków came Pruzhany, Łuków, Medzhybizh, Belz, Brest-Litovsk; from 1619 Kraków, where he headed the court and the yeshiva.
Bayit Chadash is a commentary **on the Arba'ah Turim**, not on the Shulchan Aruch; the two are constantly confused. He traces every law to its talmudic source and forward through the generations: the geonim, Alfasi, Maimonides, the Tosafists. He gave the reason himself: he was troubled that codification was narrowing the law, and that his contemporaries leaned ever more on the Shulchan Aruch without looking deeper.
Another thing confused: Hagahot ha-Bach in the margins of the Talmud is not the Bayit Chadash but another work of his — emendations to the text of the Talmud, Rashi and Tosafot.
He judged independently: he permitted a salaried rabbinate, extended the sale of chametz, allowed the reading of secular books on Shabbat; in kashrut he was strict. Kabbalistic customs at odds with halakhah he set aside. His maxim: let him who wishes to be stringent be stringent for himself alone.
His son-in-law was Rabbi David HaLevi, the Taz.
On the timeline
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Bayit Chadash — a commentary on the Tur: the law from its talmudic source forward
- Hagahot ha-Bach — emendations to the Talmud text in the margins — a different work of his
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Sirkes, Joel" — the motive: alarm at the constriction of the law by codification
Basis: documents and evidence.