Rabbi Yaakov Pollak רבי יעקב פולק
with him Polish learning began, and its famous method
Before him Poland learned Torah but was not its home: men went to study in Germany and Bohemia. Pollak changed that. A student of Rabbi Yaakov Margalioth of Nuremberg, rabbi of Prague around 1490, after 1506 he moved to Krakow—and opened the yeshiva out of which the rabbis of the Polish communities came.
His method was chillukim, distinctions: take two passages that contradict each other and show that there is no contradiction, because they speak of different things. In skilled hands it is the sharpest instrument of understanding; in unskilled, gymnastics for their own sake, and later generations reproached pilpul with exactly that. His contemporaries, though, were of one mind: Pollak was among the great of his age. We give both voices.
His students included Rabbi Shalom Shachna of Lublin, the Rema's teacher, and through them Polish learning reached the Maharal and beyond. He died at Lublin in 1541.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The testimonies on the method of chillukim among the Polish acharonim — the method; the praise of contemporaries and the later reproach
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Prague c. 1490, Krakow after 1506, died at Lublin 1541
Basis: Talmud and midrash.