R. Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (Roke’ah, c. 1165–c. 1230) was a scholar in the fields of halakhah, theology, and exegesis in medieval Germany. He was the last major scholar of the Hasidei Ashkenaz movement in Germany and northern France. He spent most of his life in Worms. R. Eleazar was a member of the Kalonymus family, one of the most important German-Jewish families of that period. His father R. Judah b. Kalonymus, one of the leading scholars of his generation, taught his son both halakhah and esoteric theology. R. Judah b. Samuel, he-Hasid ("the Pious"), the leading figure in the Hasidei Ashkenaz movement, to whom Eleazar was related, was, however, his main teacher in the latter field and R. Moses ha-Kohen and R. Eliezer of Metz were his most prominent teachers in halakhah. Eleazar witnessed and suffered personally from the new outburst of persecution of the Jews by the Crusaders at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. On a number of occasions in his commentary on the prayers, one of his major works, he noted the events that befell Worms, especially during the persecutions that followed the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin. In one of these persecutions,R. Eleazar's wife, daughter, and son were murdered, and he was severely injured. R. Eleazar's wife was very active in the religious and cultural life of her community. It is reported that she led the women in prayer and even gave public lectures to the women on the Sabbath. This tragedy was described by him in detail both in a story and in a poem. His personal loss and the catastrophic situation in the Jewish communities in Germany explain his pessimistic outlook concerning the prospects of German Jewry. He felt that the German Jewry of his time was but a small remnant after the disasters of 1096 and the following years, and that this remnant was continually diminishing. R. Eleazar's most famous work is the halakhic book Sefer ha-Roke’ah (Fano, 1505; reissued several times) followed the tradition of halakhic works of the tosafists of northern France and Germany. The book was intended to educate the common reader in the details of halakhic law. Therefore, the author did not discuss at length exegetical studies of the talmudic passages, but rather explained the law and its talmudic basis. Unlike other halakhic works written by the tosafists, Eleazar also includes recommended minhagim in his work, material which is not strictly halakhic. He drew extensively on the writings of his German predecessors and quoted more than 40 scholars.

עמ' [3-5]: מאמר רזי עולם, מכבוד אאמו"ר יקותיאל ארי' קאמעלהאר.