The Ohr Sameach—Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk רבי מאיר שמחה הכהן מדווינסק

He barely studied in a yeshiva and barely had a teacher—a rarity among the great men of that generation. The years before Dvinsk he spent in Białystok, supported by his father-in-law and studying, it is said, some eighteen hours a day; most of Meshech Chochma took shape there. From 5648 until his death he was rabbi of the mitnagdic community of Dvinsk—in the same city as the Rogatchover, who served the Hasidim.

Ohr Sameach on the Rambam appeared in parts over nearly a quarter of a century. Meshech Chochma appeared only after his death, in Riga. From it comes the well-known passage on "And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies" (Vayikra 26:44): a man will come to think that Berlin is Jerusalem, and from there will come the storm that tears him up by the roots. It was written before 5686. Yet in 5678, after the Balfour Declaration, he wrote that with international consent to the return the fear of the three oaths was lifted—an argument from a Lithuanian authority who was no Zionist.