(known by the acronym Rema; c.1525-1572). Halakhic authority and codifier. Isserles studied in Lublin under the famous scholar Shalom Shakhna, whose daughter he then married. Isserles' father built a synagogue in Cracow in honor of his son; known as the Rema Synagogue; it survived the Nazi occupation of Poland and still operates in Cracow. Isserles founded a yeshiva (rabbinical academy) in Cracow, maintaining its students at his own expense. He eventually headed Cracow's rabbinical court and became renowned as a Posek (halakhic authority), corresponding with the great scholars of his day. These included Joseph Caro, author of the Shulḥan Arukh, who became his friend.
Isserles was Polish Jewry's first great literary figure. His Darkhé Mosheh ("Ways of Moses") had been intended as a commentary on the Arba'ah Turim of Jacob Ben Asher, but when Caro's Bet Yosef appeared in 1565, he utilized his own work to counterbalance Caro's Sephardi rulings and to uphold the decisions of the Ashkenazi codifiers. An abridgment of Darké Mosheh, written by Isserles himself and called Darké Mosheh ha-Katsar, was later published on the Tur. His detailed glosses on and annotations (Haggahot) to the Shulḥan Arukh, based on Darké Mosheh, appeared in 1569-71 under the title of Ha-Mappah ("The Tablecloth"). Wherever Caro had failed to take account of Polish customs or of rulings made by Ashkenazi halakhic authorities since the time of Asher ben Jehiel, these were incorporated in Isserles's supplement. By "covering" the Shulḥan Arukh ("Prepared Table") with his own Mappah ("tablecloth"), as it were, Isserles made Caro's work acceptable to all Jewish communities. Ashkenazim now understand the term "Shulḥan Arukh" to include Isserles's supplementary notes; when there is a difference of opinion between the two, they accept Isserles's view as authoritative. He paid special attention to matters of Custom (minhag), asserting in his Darkhé Mosheh that "the minhag of our fathers is the law." Moreover, he made every effort to reach a lenient decision in cases where a substantial material loss was involved.
Isserles also wrote many other halakhic works, some of which were published years after his death. Outstanding among them are Torat ha-Ḥattat (1569), on the laws of forbidden and permitted foods; a volume of Responsa (1640); and glosses to various works by Maimonides, Elijah Mizrahi, Mordecai ben Hillel, and other scholars. His Meḥir Yayin (1559) provided a homiletical exposition of the Scroll of Esther, while Torat ha-Olah (1570) was a philosophical work dealing with the symbolic meaning of the Temple and its service. Isserles had a knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy, gained from the works of Maimonides, and of Kabbalah, history, and astronomy. He had an unusually broad cultural outlook and was able to synthesize philosophy and Jewish mysticism and then combine them with the halakhah. Isserles was revered by Polish Jewry and had many eminent pupils and descendants.
Inscribed upon his tombstone which still stands in the courtyard of the Rema Synagogue, is this tribute: "From Moses [Maimonides] to Moses [Isserles] there has arisen no one like Moses."
