Or Zarua—Rabbi Yitzchak of Vienna רבי יצחק מווינה
he gathered Ashkenaz and France into one book
Rabbi Yitzchak ben Moshe (c. 1180–1250) came from Bohemia and studied in Regensburg under Rabbi Yehuda heChasid, under the Raavyah, and under Rabbi Shimshon of Sens in France—and so his book is unique of its kind: it holds together the piety of the Rhineland communities and the sharpness of French analysis.
The Or Zarua—"Light is sown"—is a vast code: laws, customs, responsa, and beside them accounts of how the teachers acted. It preserved dozens of rulings and customs whose sources perished; historians read it as a chronicle of the communities of the thirteenth century.
His chief student was the Maharam of Rothenburg; through the Maharam the book reached the Mordechai, the Rosh and the Arbaah Turim—that is, the very foundation of Ashkenazi practice.
The sources give no exact years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman and the lists of Seder haDorot.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Or Zarua — the code of Ashkenazi law, custom and responsa
Scholarship
- Reference literature: years of life — the years of birth and death by the agreed count of the reference literature; where the source says «about», it is marked as such
Basis: documents and evidence.