The Sha'agat Aryeh

R. Aryeh Leib Ginzberg (1695-1785), the Sha'agat Aryeh, was one of the towering Lithuanian Acharonim of the pre-Vilna Gaon generation. After a peripatetic early career — serving as rav in Minsk, Volozhin, and elsewhere — he became Av Beit Din of Metz, France, where he served for the final 19 years of his life. His Sha'agat Aryeh responsa, published in his lifetime in 1755, is regarded as a paradigm of clear and aggressive talmudic reasoning — one of the most-cited responsa collections in Litvish-yeshivish Torah study to this day.