Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg (1150 – 22 February 1217[1][2]), also called Yehuda HeHasid[3] or Judah the Pious in Hebrew, was a leader of the Ashkenazi Hasidim a movement of Jewish mysticism in Germany (not to be confused with the 18th-century Hasidic Judaism founded by the Baal Shem Tov).
His father Samuel, also called HeHasid "the Pious", HaKadosh "the Holy", and HaNabi "the Prophet",[6] was president of a bet midrash in Speyer, and from him Judah, together with his brother Abraham, received his early instruction.
[citation needed] According to MS Guenzburg 109 f. 73r, "he was buried in the holy city of Regensburg and I, [Menahem] Ullendorf ben Naftali, visited his grave on Tisha b'Av of [1471] and signed my name upon his tombstone."
[17][2] It is rather difficult to determine in what the new and important departure ascribed to him by legend consisted, since the obscurity spread over his works is as impenetrable as that surrounding his life.
Occasionally a halakhic writing, Gan Bosem, is quoted as his;[18] a decision of his is found in Samson ben Zadok's Sefer Tašbaṣ § 219,[19][20] in Isaac ben Moses of Vienna's Or Zarua, and in Meïr Rothenburg's collection of responsa;[21] and he is found in correspondence with celebrated halakhists of his age.
According to Zunz,[26] it seems to be genuine, as do also his prayer Yechabeh Dim`ati and his selicha Gadol Yichudcha Elohim Beyisrael.
More probably, according to the sources,[27] his father, or a certain Samuel Ḥazzan, who died as a martyr at Erfurt in 1121, composed the Shir ha-Yiḥud, and Judah himself wrote a commentary on it.
[28] Several prayers are erroneously attributed to Judah; e.g., Zunz wrongly ascribes to him the alphabetical teḥinnah Ezkera Yom Moti.
[33] This testament contained regulations regarding the dead (§§ 1-15), the building of houses (§§ 16-21), matrimony (§§ 22-32), prohibited marriages between stepbrothers and stepsisters and between cousins, and various customs and superstitious prescriptions (§§ 33-end).
[38] There are also ascribed to Judah an astrological work, Gemaṭriot,[39] handed down by his pupils and seen by Chaim Azulai, and Sefer ha-Ḥokhmah, on prayers and customs and the writing of scrolls of the Law.
The book contains ethical, ascetic, and mystical teachings, intermingled with elements of German popular belief.
Judah's mysticism was in such a stage of opposition; he therefore undervalued the study of the Halakhah and indulged in marked departures from the accepted religious practises.
[2] The conception of a personal relation to the Lord was long since felt by Jewish thinkers to be inconsistent with His spiritual nature.
[40][2] Lacking the philosophic training common among the Spanish Jews – although he was acquainted with Ibn Ezra, Saadia, some of the Karaites, and perhaps Maimonides – Judah did not reduce his mystic-theosophical theories to a system, and they are therefore difficult to survey.
[41] Zunz says of him: "To vindicate whatever is noble in human endeavors, and the highest aspirations of the Israelite, and to discover the inmost truths alluded to in the Sacred Books, seemed to be the ultimate purpose of a mind in which poetic, moral, and divine qualities were fused.