PUCHOVITZER, JUDAH LEIB.

Puchovitzer (c.1630-c.1700), Lithuanian scholar and preacher from Pinsk whose fundamental homiletic teaching is the study of Torah for its’ own sake must lead to a righteous upstanding life. He urged communities throughout Lithuania and Poland to establish Study Halls where Torah would be permanently deliberated. His sermons gave great impetus to the formation of such study groups in Lithuania. The author dedicates his Keneih Chochmah to the memory of the 300 Jews, including his own daughter, who were massacred by Muscovite soldiers during the conquest of the town of Bykhov in 1659. See A. Ya’ari, Mechkerei Sepher (1958), pp. 102-3. Regarding Puchovitzer’s intellectual definition of Torah Lishmah, pre-dating that of Chaim of Volozhin and Menashe of Ilye, see N. Lamm, Puchovitzer’s Concept of Torah Lishmah, in, Jewish Social Studies, vol. 30, no. 3 (July 1988). Lamm also dismisses Jacob Katz’s interpretation in Masoret U’mashber (1958) of Puchovitzer’s works as a basis for defining Torah Lishmah as the study of mysticism, see N. Lamm, Torah Lishmah (1989) p.253. For a number of articles discussing Puchovitzer as one of the sources of the controversial Chemdath Hayamim, see I. Tishby in, Tarbiz, later published in his Mechkerei Kabbalah