Three Contemporary Perceptions of a Polish Wunderkind of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

In the year 1620, Abraham b. Naphtali Hirsch Schor, the head of the rabbinical court of Satanov, Poland, wrote to Rabbi Mordecai b. David Katz of the neighboring community of Lvov (Lemberg) about a “great and terrible act of God which I heard and saw with my own eyes here in the holy congregation of Satanov.” R. Abraham related the following story:…Here in the holy congregation of Gródek (Gorodok) three parasangs away from Satanov, there lives a man named R. Gedaliah with a small four-and-ahalf- year-old son. The youth is a mere boy having no superiority in his studies over the rest of the children of his age. But when his father began to study the Hebrew alphabet and the prayer book with him and saw that the holy spirit rests upon him, he subsequently brought the boy before me to the holy congregation of Satanov to test him. And I tested him several times—a hundred times and more—myself along with my colleagues who were with me and we saw the work of the Lord and his wonders, for He is exceedingly great. I asked him: “Please tell me the beginning of the halakhah learned today.” He immediately related the halakhah, answering: “Rabbi Ashi said that our mishnah states: I can likewise prove,” etc.