Eliyahu Baal Shem (1550 – 1583) was a Polish

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

and kabbalist who served as

chief rabbi Chief Rabbi ( he, רב ראשי ''Rav Rashi'') is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities. Since 1911, through a ...

Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...

. Jewish Encyclopedia Bibliography: Friedberg, ''Luḥot Zikkaron'', p. 32,

Drohobycz Drohobych ( uk, Дрого́бич, ; pl, Drohobycz; yi, דראָהאָביטש;) is a city of regional significance in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Drohobych Raion and hosts the administration of Drohobych urban hr ...

, 1897;

Emden Emden () is an independent city and seaport in Lower Saxony in the northwest of Germany, on the river Ems. It is the main city of the region of East Frisia and, in 2011, had a total population of 51,528. History The exact founding date of Em ...

Megillat Sefer, p. 4
Warsaw, 1896; Horodetzky, Kerem Shelomoh, p. 33, Drohobycz, 1896; Ha-Meassef, p. 157, St. Petersburg, 1902. One of the most eminent Talmudists of his generation, he is recorded as the first person known by the epithet " Ba'al Shem" having been considered a great saint and believed to have used miraculous powers to create a

golem A golem ( ; he, , gōlem) is an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore, which is entirely created from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-centur ...

Life

Elijah was born to his father Aaron Judah in 1550. About 1565, he entered the

yeshiva A yeshiva (; he, ישיבה, , sitting; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are stu ...

of Rabbi

Solomon Luria Solomon Luria (1510 – November 7, 1573) ( he, שלמה לוריא) was one of the great Ashkenazic ''poskim'' (decisors of Jewish law) and teachers of his time. He is known for his work of Halakha, ''Yam Shel Shlomo'', and his Talmudic comment ...

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...

, and after receiving his rabbinical ordination, became rabbi of Chełm, a position he held for the rest of his life. In 1564, he gathered with other prominent rabbis, including his teacher, to cosign the halachic rulings, which allowed an ''

agunah An ''agunah'' ( he, עגונה, plural: agunot (); literally "anchored" or "chained") is a Jewish woman who is stuck in her religious marriage as determined by ''halakha'' (Jewish law). The classic case of this is a man who has left on a journey ...

'' to remarry. His great-granddaughter married Rabbi Ephraim ha-Kohen (1616–1678), author of "''Sha'ar Efrayim''" and grandfather of Rabbi

Tzvi Ashkenazi Tzvi Hirsch ben Yaakov Ashkenazi ( he, צבי אשכנזי; 1656 – May 2, 1718), known as the Chacham Tzvi after his responsa by the same title, served for some time as rabbi of Amsterdam. He was a resolute opponent of the followers of the fal ...

The Golem of Chełm

According to

Jacob Emden Jacob Emden, also known as Ya'avetz (June 4, 1697 April 19, 1776), was a leading German rabbi and talmudist who championed Orthodox Judaism in the face of the growing influence of the Sabbatean movement. He was acclaimed in all circles for his ...

, the son of the aforementioned Tzvi Ashkenazi, the Golem is said to have grown so that the rabbi feared that he might destroy the world. citing Azulai, "''Shem ha-Gedolim''," i., No. 163. Finally, the rabbi extracted the ''Shem'' from the forehead of his Golem, which returned to dust, but the Golem scratched his master's face in the process. An anonymous 1630 manuscript (the earliest known written legend of a contemporary figure creating a golem) recounts that the golem continued to grow that the rabbi had to destroy it by erasing the

Hebrew letter The Hebrew alphabet ( he, wikt:אלפבית, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew languag ...

aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These let ...

, first letter from the word ''emet'' (truth)(אמת)Sefer Yetzirah Timeline
/ref> thereby rendering it ''met'' (dead)(מת). Although Emden only mentions a scratch on the rabbi's face, a different version of the legend states that while trying to remove the life-giving name of God in an attempt to destroy the raging beast, Rabbi Elijah was crushed to death under the weight of the Golem as it fell to pieces. Elijah's grandsons, Tzvi Ashkenazi and his son Jacob Emden, were both great Halakhists. They discussed the legal status of the golem: could the golem be counted in a

minyan In Judaism, a ''minyan'' ( he, מניין \ מִנְיָן ''mīnyān'' , lit. (noun) ''count, number''; pl. ''mīnyānīm'' ) is the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. In more traditional streams of Jud ...

, the quorum of ten men required for prayer. Human form and modicum of understanding were not enough to make something human. The tale about Elijah's creation of the Golem was retold in the book ''Israel der Gotteskampfer der Baalschem von Chełm und sein Golem'' ("Israel God's fighter of Baalshem of Chełm and his Golem") written by Chayim Block and published in 1920.

The attic of the Old Synagogue

According to the "''Jewish Life and Work in Chełm''" chapter of the ''Commemoration Book of Chełm (Poland)'' (''Yisker-bukh Chełm''),

"No one was allowed to enter the attic of the Old Synagogue. No one even knew where the key to the attic could be found. One person whispered to another the secret that in the attic there lies the golem of the famous Rabbi Elijah Ba'al Shem.

It was said that Elijah Ba'al Shem created from clay a golem who would stand on market days with an ax in his hand, and as soon as he saw that a peasant was going to beat up a Jew, the golem killed the peasant.

An entire week the golem served the Rabbi, the Rabbi's wife, and he performed the manual labor in the Beit Hamidrash Jewish house of study where the study of the Torah is undertaken

When the local landowner found out about the golem's might, the Ba'al Shem led the golem to the attic, withdrew from him the ineffable name of God, and converted the golem into a heap of clay. The Ba'al Shem locked the door, took with him the key, and since then the attic remained bolted."

German-Jews of Jerusalem and the Crusades

According to Rabbi Elijah,

German Jews The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

lived in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

during the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking

Palestinian Jew Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region (known in Hebrew as ''Eretz Yisrael'', ) prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The common term used to refer to the Jewish comm ...

saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger. So when the

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...

s of the

First Crusade The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic ...

came to besiege Jerusalem, one of Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to

Worms, Germany Worms () is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had about 82,000 inhabitants . A pre-Roman foundation, Worms is one of the oldest cities in northern Europe. It wa ...

to repay the favor. Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of

halakhic ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical comman ...

questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the eleventh century.Epstein, in "Monatsschrift", xlvii. 344
Jerusalem: Under the Arabs
/ref>

Funeral

According to popular legend, Elijah's greatness was witnessed in dramatic fashion soon after his death. It was said that during his time, the only road to the Jewish cemetery passed by a Russian church. Whenever a

Jewish funeral Bereavement in Judaism () is a combination of ''minhag'' and '' mitzvah'' derived from the Torah and Judaism's classical rabbinic texts. The details of observance and practice vary according to each Jewish community. Mourners In Judaism, the ...

procession passed by, Christians would throw rocks. Elijah knew of this and requested in his will that no one move or run away if the Christians did the same following his death. Elijah's wishes were carried out after his death. When the procession neared the church, gentiles began their ritual of pelting the coffin and the Jews with rocks, Elijah miraculously sat up and, after looking into the

Torah scroll A ( he, סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה; "Book of Torah"; plural: ) or Torah scroll is a handwritten copy of the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses (the first books of the Hebrew Bible). The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Tor ...

that was in the coffin o be buried with him the church sank together with the hooligans. The rabbi then lay back and became rigid as a corpse again. The Jews stared at each other in astonishment and the funeral procession continued. From this time forward, it was said that the hooligans no longer threw rocks during Jewish funerals. Years later, pupils of the ''Kheder'' (Jewish elementary school) of a teacher named Leib Paks claimed that in the cellar, when jumping on the floor boards, the muffled ring of a bell sound could be heard. This led the children to believe that that was the very same spot where the church had sunk.

Grave

Within the Chełm cemetery, there was a grave without a tombstone which was covered in bricks arranged in the shape of the

"Bet". This was believed to be the final burial place of Rabbi Elijah. Legend has it an

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inc ...

would appear on the anniversary of his death and etch a letter on a certain brick. Because of this, everyone was afraid to touch the bricks.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chelm, Elijah Baal Shem Of Baal Shem 1550 births 1583 deaths 16th-century Polish rabbis