ELEAZAR BEN JUDAH BEN KALONYMUS OF WORMS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

On December 4, 1197, Crusaders wounded Rabbi Elezar ben Judah. From the article:

"UDAH BEN KALONYMUS OF WORMS
Talmudist and cabalist; born, probably at Mayence, about 1176; died at Worms in 1238. He was a descendant of the great Kalonymus family of Mayence, and a disciple of Judah he-Ḥasid, who initiated him into the study of the Cabala, at that time little known in Germany. According to Zunz, Eleazar was ḥazzan at Erfurt before he became rabbi at Worms. In 1233 he took part in the great Synod of Mayence which enacted the body of regulations known as "Taḳḳanot ShuM" (


= "Speyer, Worms, Mayence"). Eleazar underwent great sufferings during the Crusades. On the night of 22 Kislew, 1196, he was engaged on his commentary on Genesis (he relates that he had reached the parashah Wayesheb), when two crusaders entered his house and killed his wife Dulcina, his two daughters Belat and Hannah, and his son Jacob. His wife had conducted a business in parchment scrolls in order to support the family and enable him to devote all his time to study.

Eleazar developed a vigorous activity in many directions. On the one hand, he was a Talmudist of vast erudition, a liturgist gifted with a clear and easy style, and an astronomer, and was well versed in the sciences open to the Jews of Germany at that time. On the other hand, he was a cabalist swayed by hallucinations; he saw legions of angels and demons, and exerted himself to spread cabalistic systems which went far beyond the conceptions of the authors of the Cabala. In his cabalistic workshe developed and gave a new impulse to the mysticism associated with the letters of the alphabet. The philosophical Cabala of the school of Isaac the Blind is replaced by arithmetical speculations. By the gemaṭria and noṭariḳon systems of interpretation found in the Talmud, Eleazar invented new combinations by which miracles could be performed. The haggadic anthropomorphism which he had combated in his earlier works ("Ha-Roḳeaḥ," "Sha'are ha-Sod weha-Yiḥud") occupied later the foremost place in his cabalistic writings. Eleazar's great merit lies not in his new cabalistic system, but in his ethical works. In these he shows greatness of soul and a piety bordering upon asceticism. Though so severely tried by fate, he inculcates cheerfulness, patience, and love for humanity."

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