Commentary: On Genesis and Isaiah

Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, a member of the influential Qalonymos family, was probably born in Mainz and settled later in Worms, Germany. A kabbalist and talmudic scholar, Eleazar produced several important rabbinic works that incorporate mystical approaches into the study of Talmud and halakhah. One of these works, his legal code titled Book of the Perfumer (Sefer ha-rokeaḥ), lent Eleazar the appellation of “ha-Rokeaḥ.” Eleazar and his family belonged to a small community of Jews called the German Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz) which thrived between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He was a disciple of the movement’s founder, R. Judah of Regensburg, known as R. Judah the Pious (1140–1217). Parts of The Book of the Pious may have been written or edited by Eleazar. Eleazar’s wife, Dolce, and their two daughters were killed in 1196, and Eleazar’s elegies in their honor remain important sources for familial relationships and women’s lives in medieval Ashkenaz.