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placed by the Jews of those times upon their
spiritual leaders.
After leaving Brisk in Lithuania, the Bach
was av bet din and teacher in the great community
of Cracow, where he lived from 1618 until
his death in 1641."
Students streamed to his yeshiva in Cracow
from all over Poland and Lithuania, and many
later became great rabbis and scholars.
The Bach not only led the yeshiva in Cracow.
In other places where he served, he either established
yeshivas or enlarged those already existing,
among them Luboml's.
The following story is connected with the
Bach's yeshiva in Lubomland some say it was
Myazovitzand even if it is not entirely true, it is
a nice story to relate in any event.
One of the Bach's best pupils was R. Dovid
Segal, one of the greatest of the more recent
scholars, known primarily as the Taz after his
commentary Turei Zahav. The Bach very early on
saw the scholarly tendencies of his pupil and
greatly encouraged him, bringing him into his
circle.
Once, when the Bach and a few of his best
students sat at the Sabbath table and were talking
Torah off-handedly, the young Dovid brought up
the Rambam, who in his Hilchos Sefer Torah (Bk.
7, halacha 6) wrote, "The scribe came across a
word which had ten letters, more or less."
And Dovid asked:
"Where in the Torah do we find a word that
has ten letters or more?" He knew of words with
a maximum of nine letters such as
lemishpachoteyhem (Genesis 8:19) br
leyishma'elim (Genesis 37:27).
So the Bach answered:
"Let us call Rivke and hear what she has to
say."
Rivke was the Bach's daughter, very pretty
and very learned in the Bible. She was 12 at the
time, and when they repeated the question to her,
she said:
"In the Torah itself, there are no words with
ten letters. But in Prophets [Isaiah 18:21], the
word lemishpachoteyhem is written out, fully
spelled out, with the vav"i.e., ten letters"but
this has nothing to do with the Rambam's laws
THE EARLY DAYS 29
regarding the writing of a Torah scroll."
And after thinking a while, she said:
"I think I have found an answer. This law of
the Rambam also applies to writing the Scroll of
Esther and there (9:3) is a word with 11 letters:
veha'achshedarpanim."
The Bach then stood up and said:
"My daughter, you are clever, in addition to
being as beautiful as the moon."
And following this, the young Dovid said:
"Perhaps it is time to 'sanctify the moon." (A
play on words, as the same word mekadesh is
used in reference to the wedding ceremony.)
Later that night, after the Sabbath, Rivke
became engaged to Dovid and the Taz in fact later
became the son-in-law of the Bach."
While in Cracow, the great Bach had a dispute
with a small, local cantor. How is it that a
world-famous rabbi has a dispute with a minor
local cantor? It happened like this.
In the bet midrash where the Bach prayed,
there was a cantor who said he knew Talmud
better than the rabbi. He would think up stupid
questions and come to the Bach in front of everybody
to try to show off or catch the rabbi.
It happened that once, while chanting from
the Torah, the cantor found an error in the scroll.
There was a word containing an extra letter, a
yod; instead of "Yehoshua," the word was written
as "Yehoshia."
The cantor said that the Torah scroll was
defective, but the Bach disagreed. The cantor
laughed and said they should take out another
Torah scroll.
The Bach, a modest man who was very careful
regarding relations among his fellow men, at
that point lost control and said to the cantor:
"Fool, boor! I tell you, you don't have to take
out another Torah."
The cantor answered cheekily: "You yourself
are the boor!"
In response the Bach said:
"You are excommunicated, for you do not
follow what your rabbi has told you. You are
altogether a heretic and a scoffer at the words of
our scholars."
The cantor did not give in and continued to
speak insultingly to the rabbi. The rabbi then