Mordecai Benet

Mordecai ben Abraham Benet (Hebrew: מרדכי בן אברהם בנט, also Marcus Benedict; 1753–1829) was a Talmudist and chief rabbi of Moravia.

He then went as a "ḥaber" (senior student) to Prague, where Meïr Karpeles started a private "klaus" for him; though Ezekiel Landau (Noda bihudah) conducted a large yeshiva in the same city, a number of able Talmudists came daily to hear Benet's discourses.

Thirteen years later he accepted the rabbinate at Lundenburg in Moravia, which he held for six months, when he resigned to become rabbi at Schossberg, Hungary.

The communities of Lichtenstadt and Nikolsburg contended for the honor of interring his mortal remains, and the dispute which later arose over the exhumation of the body was fought with the weapons of learning, and figures in the responsa literature of the time.

His friend the famed Chasam Sofer who had the highest esteem for him; eulogized him and called him "ben yachid leKudsha Berich Hu" (an only child to God); meaning that no one was his equal.

Moreover, Benet's attitude toward the strict orthodoxy of his friends and colleagues was exceptional, and may be attributed to his knowledge of modern thought (compare his letter to Ẓebi Hirsch Levin in Literaturblatt des Orients, v. 54).

They are: All these works clearly show Benet's keenness, wide knowledge of rabbinical literature, and, what is still more important, his logical and strictly scientific method.

In contrast to his friends Moses Sofer and Akiba Eiger, who were casuists, Benet avoided casuistry in discussing involved halakhic questions, gaining his ends by means of a purely critical explanation and a systematic arrangement of the matter.

An excellent example of Benet's criticism is his letter to the chief rabbi of Berlin, Tzvi Hirsch Levin, whom he tries to convince of the spuriousness of the collection of responsa Besamim Rosh.