Who are these talmidei chachamin who have dedicated their talents, time, and skill to disseminate someone else’s Torah?
Project Coordinator: Shmuel Botnick
Last week, Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman put out his 40th annotated volume of the writings of the 16th-century gadol the Maharal, Rav Yehudah ben Betzalel Loew: Drush al HaTorah, focusing on Matan Torah. The drashah was delivered on Shavuos 1592 in the Polish city of Pozna. As the 40 volumes to date attest, Rabbi Hartman has long since made peace with the fact that he has a “lifetime contract” with the Maharal, whose corpus of writing contains more words than the entire Talmud.
Even should he complete annotated volumes (actually multi-volumes) of each of the Maharal’s seforim, Rabbi Hartman is contemplating subsequent volumes in which he will gather all the Maharal’s writings on particular mitzvos — Shabbos, tefillin, bris milah, tzitzis, birchos haTorah, tefillah — and show how all the Maharal’s statements on that mitzvah derive from a common root.
The writings of the Maharal, Rabbi Hartman says, “are addicting. They open your mind and elevate you.” He points to Rav Yosef Engel, author of Atwan d’Oraisa, and one of the great lamdanim of the last 150 years, who attributed his entire method of learning to the Maharal.
Rabbi Hartman would be the first to admit that he did not discover, or rediscover, the writings of the Maharal, even though those writings fell into oblivion following the Maharal’s passing.
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