Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein רבי יחיאל מיכל אפשטיין

Born at Bobruisk in 1829. He was rabbi of Novozybkov, and from 1874 until his death of Novardok: thirty-four years in one place.

He is tied to Volozhin twice over: he studied there and married the Netziv's sister—and later the Netziv married his daughter. His son, Rabbi Baruch Epstein, wrote the Torah Temimah.

The Aruch ha-Shulchan is not built as a reference book. Epstein takes a law and carries it from the Talmud through the Rishonim to how it is ruled—and so the book can be read through, not merely dipped into. It appeared almost at the same time as the Chafetz Chaim's Mishnah Berurah, and the two are different answers to one question: the Mishnah Berurah says what to do, the Aruch ha-Shulchan why it is ruled so. In the Ashkenazi world the first prevailed, but where there is a dispute it is the second that is consulted.

One further trait: he describes the law as it actually lived in his communities—and so the book is at the same time a witness to how custom was really kept in late nineteenth-century Lithuania.