Yehuda HaKohen Heller

Rabbi Yehuda HaKohen Heller (1743–1819) was a Galician-born Talmudist and halakhist remembered chiefly for a short study of legal doubt. Born in Kalush, he was a descendant of the seventeenth-century authority Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller and one of several learned brothers, among them Aryeh Leib Heller, author of the Ketzos HaChoshen. He served as a rabbinical judge in Munkacz and as rabbi of Selish before being appointed rabbi of Sighet, in the Maramureș region, in 1802. His best-known work, the Kuntres HaSfeikos, treats the many Talmudic cases—especially in monetary law—in which a settled ruling cannot be reached; it circulated widely appended to his brother's Ketzos HaChoshen, with which it is customarily printed. He also wrote Terumas HaKri, a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch.