Rabbi Israel Bruna רבי ישראל ברונא

Born about 1400 at Brünn, he studied with Rabbi David of Schweidnitz and with Rabbi Israel Isserlein. From 1446 he was at Regensburg, where he set up a yeshiva.

There a long dispute began: the town already had a rabbi, Rabbi Anshel Segal, and a yeshiva of his own. The quarrel ran for years, and though both Jacob Weil and Isserlein pronounced for Bruna, it ended only with Anshel's death—and then Bruna was acknowledged head of the community. That too belongs to the picture of the century: a rabbi's authority rested not on appointment from above but on recognition, and recognition had to be won.

In 1456 he was imprisoned over a coronation tax. In 1474 an apostate, Hans Vayol, accused him of ritual murder; the Emperor Frederick III and King Ladislas II of Bohemia intervened, Bruna was released and the informer executed.

After the deaths of Weil and Isserlein he was consulted from everywhere. His responsa, published posthumously, are one of the chief sources for how the German community of the fifteenth century lived.