Meir of Rothenburg

Meir of Rothenburg
Tombs of Meir of Rothenburg (left) and Alexander ben Salomon Wimpfen (right) in the Jewish cemetery of Worms
Personal details
Born	c. 1215 Worms, Holy Roman Empire
Died	2 May 1293 Wasserburg am Inn, Bavaria

Meir of Rothenburg (c. 1215 – 2 May 1293) was a German Rabbi and poet, a major author of the tosafot on Rashi's commentary on the Talmud. He is also known as Meir ben Baruch, the Maharam of Rothenburg. Rabbi Menachem Meiri referred to Rab Meir of Rothenberg, as the "greatest Jewish leader of Zarfat" alive at the time, Zarfat is Medieval Hebrew for France which was a reference to Charlemagne's rule of Germany.

Rabbi Meir was born between 1215 and 1220 in Worms. He comes from a long line of rabbis. His first teacher was his father. He continued his training in Würzburg under Isaac ben Moses of Vienna and in France, where he remained until 1242, his teachers being Yechiel of Paris, Samuel ben Solomon of Falaise, and Samuel of Évreux, witnessing the burning of the Talmud on June 17, 1244, in Paris. He then settled in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, opening a yeshiva in his house. After the death of his father in 1281, he settled in Worms. In 1286, King Rudolf I instituted a new persecution of the Jews, declaring them servi camerae ("serfs of the treasury"), which had the effect of negating their political freedoms. Along with many others, Meir left Germany with family and followers, but was captured in the mountains of Lombardy having been recognized by a baptized Jew named Kneppe, and imprisoned in a fortress near Ensisheim in Alsace. Tradition has it that a large ransom of 23,000 marks silver was raised for him (by the Rosh), but Rabbi Meir refused it, for fear of encouraging the imprisonment of other rabbis. He ruled on his own abduction in light of Talmudic law. He died in prison after seven years. Fourteen years after his death a ransom was paid for his body by Alexander ben Salomon Wimpfen, who was subsequently laid to rest beside the Maharam in the Jewish cemetery of Worms.