Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen (1541–1617) was a wealthy and politically influential Polish Jew who is in Jewish folk legends said to have briefly occupied the throne of Poland on 18 August 1587.
[2] Wahl married Deborah Rivkah Drucker,[4] granddaughter of Israel ben Josef and niece of Moses Isserles, with whom he had thirteen children, including the renowned Polish rabbi Meir and Henele Wahl Katzenallenbogen, wife of Ephraim Zalman Shor.
[1][6] The version of the story set forth in the Jewish Encyclopedia reads as follows: At a point in his life, Lithuanian noble Nicholas Radziwill, wishing to do penance for the many atrocities he had committed while a young man, undertook a pilgrimage to Rome in order to consult the pope as to the best means for expiating his sins.
To allow Radziwill to repay the favour, Samuel asked that he help find his son Saul, who years before had left to study in a yeshiva in Poland.
When King Stephen Báthory died in 1586, the Poles were divided between wishing to be ruled by the Zamoyski family and the Zborowski.