Rabbi Akiva Eiger רבי עקיבא איגר

Gilyon haShas—Rabbi Akiva Eiger's brief notes in the margins of the Talmud—has been printed ever since in every Vilna edition and all that descend from it. It is not a commentary but a set of questions: places where what is said here does not agree with what is said there. Learning from them is hard, and useful.

Posen called him for twenty-three years, while twenty-two men of the community wrote to the Prussian authorities that the town needed a more modern rabbi. Rabbi Yaakov of Lissa settled the quarrel. And in the cholera of 5591–5592 Rabbi Akiva did what few dared: he issued hygiene regulations, ordered water boiled, permitted prayer without a minyan, shortened the services, and by lot admitted only a third of the worshippers to the synagogues on the Days of Awe. Frederick William III of Prussia sent him a letter of thanks.