person · P0084
Yehudah ben Meir HaKohen רבי יהודה בן מאיר הכהן
"Sir Leontin" — the attested teacher of Rabbeinu Gershom, and therefore the earliest named master of the Ashkenazic line. Almost nothing else about him is secure: his own teachers are nowhere recorded, and the traditions that tie him to Italy and the Kalonymus migration are reconstruction, not attestation. He is where the Ashkenaz chain's documented personal reception begins — and, going upstream, where it honestly ends.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- רבי יהודה בן מאיר הכהן
- Also known as
- Leontin, Sir Leontin, Yehudah HaKohen HaZaken
- Era
- geonim
- Transmitted the mesorah to
- Rabbeinu Gershom
- Students
- Rabbeinu Gershom
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 4690–4760 AM
- Academic
- fl. late 10th century CE (c. 930–1000)
- Lifespan (traditional)
- ≈70 years
- Precision
- approximate
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rabbeinu Gershom names him as his teacher in his responsa, and the secondary literature uniformly identifies R' Yehudah ben Meir HaKohen ("Leontin," styled "the elder" and even "the gaon") as Gershom's principal master. | tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| His own reception is unattested. Later tradition and modern reconstruction place him in the orbit of the Italian academies and the Kalonymus family's migration to the Rhineland, but no source names his teacher — so no upstream personal edge is drawn, and the Ashkenaz chain visibly begins here.
Deliberate absence of an upstream edge: this is the honest top of the Ashkenazic personal chain. The Bavel→Ashkenaz handoff was textual (responsa and books), not personal.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |