Asher ben Jehiel

Asher ben Jehiel, known by the acronym the Rosh, was a rabbinic scholar born around 1250 in Cologne in the Holy Roman Empire who studied under Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and succeeded him as a leading legal authority in Worms after Meir was imprisoned during persecution ordered by King Rudolf the First in 1286; targeted himself for his wealth, Asher fled Germany, traveled through southern France, and settled in Toledo in the Christian kingdom of Castile, where he died in 1327. His major legal work distilled the Talmud's discussions into the final, practical rulings alone, leaving out the intermediate argument, in a form later compiled by his son Jacob ben Asher into a text known as the Piskei HaRosh, the Rosh's decisions. Asher's rulings carried such authority that Joseph Karo later named him, alongside Maimonides and Isaac Alfasi, as one of the three principal decisors whose views the Shulchan Aruch would follow when Jewish legal authorities disagreed. Historians credit Asher with transplanting the strict, close textual study of the Talmud that had characterized German Jewish scholarship into Spain, redirecting Spanish Jewish learning toward Talmudic study and away from the secular philosophy that had dominated it before his arrival.