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For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone? Kohelet 6:12 |
Isaiah Horowitz, (c. 1565 – March 24, 1630), also known as the Shelah ha-Kadosh (the holy Shelah) after the title of his best-known work, was a prominent Levite rabbi and mystic.
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Horowitz was born in Prague in around 1565. He studied under Meir Lublin and Joshua Falk. He married Chaya Moul, daughter of Abraham Moul of Vienna. He was a wealthy and active philanthropist, supporting Torah study, especially in Jerusalem. After serving as rabbi in many prominent cities in Europe, he left Frankfurt am Main - following the Fettmilch uprising - and assumed the prestigious position of rabbi of Prague. In 1620, after the death of his wife, he moved to Palestine and remarried there. He was kidnapped in Jerusalem and ransomed by the local Pasha; he then moved to Safed (1626), erstwhile home of Kabbalah. Horowitz died in Tiberias on March 24, 1630 (Nissan 11, 5390 on the Hebrew calendar).
In his many Kabbalistic, homiletic and halachic works, he stressed the joy in every action, and how one should convert the evil inclination into good, two concepts that influenced Jewish thought through to the eighteenth-century, and greatly influenced the development of the Chassidic movement.
Famous descendants of Horowitz included the prominent Billiczer Rabbinical family of Szerencs, Hungary and the Dym family of Rabbis and communal leaders in Galicia.
His most important work Shnei Luchos ha-Bris (Hebrew: שני לוחות הברית (Two Tablets of the Covenant); abbreviated Shelah של"ה), is an encyclopedic compilation of ritual, ethics, and mysticism. It was originally intended as an ethical will - written as a compendium of the Jewish religion. The title page of the first edition states that the work is "compiled from both Torahs, Written and Oral, handed down from Sinai". The work has had a profound influence on Jewish life - notably, on the early Hassidic movement, including the Baal Shem Tov; Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi was described as a "Shelah Yid", and Shelah clearly echoes in Tanya. The Shelah has been often reprinted, especially in an abbreviated form. The work was first published in 1648 by his son, Rabbi Shabbethai Horowitz.
Horowitz also wrote the Sha'ar ha-Shamayim siddur (prayer book) which had an influence on the later Ashkenazi Nusach.
Rabbi Horwitz wrote that the eve of the first day of the Hebrew month of Sivan is the most auspicious time to pray for the physical and spiritual welfare of one's children and grandchildren, since Sivan was the month that the Torah was given to the Jewish people. He composed a special prayer to be said on this day, known as the Tefillat HaShlah - the Shlah's Prayer. In modern times, the custom of saying this prayer on the appointed day has become very popular among Orthodox Jewish parents.
In 2012, the day for reciting the prayer falls on Monday, May 21, 2012, before sunset.
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Ishaya A-Levi Gorovitz
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