Nesanel Weil

Rabbi Nesanel (Nathanael) Weil was a German-Bohemian talmudist born in 1687 in Stühlingen, a son of Naphtali Zvi Hirsch Weil. As a boy he was brought to Fürth and then to Prague, where he studied under Rabbi Abraham Broda and married Broda's niece. He spent decades in Prague as a teacher and assistant rabbi until the 1744 expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia decreed by Empress Maria Theresa. In 1745 he took up the rabbinate of the Black Forest district, seated at Mühringen, and from 1750 he led the community of Karlsruhe until his death in 1769. He is remembered chiefly for Korban Nesanel, a commentary on the Piskei ha-Rosh — the halakhic decisions of Asher ben Jehiel — which appears in standard printings of the Talmud. He also composed Netiv Chayim, glosses on the Shulchan Aruch, and Toras Nesanel, containing his responsa and Torah sermons.