Brody, Solomon Zalman ben Israel
BRODY, SOLOMON ZALMAN BEN ISRAEL
BRODY, SOLOMON ZALMAN BEN ISRAEL (1835–1917), rabbi and author. Brody, a member of the well-known rabbinical family of that name, was born in Ungvar (Uzhgorod), Hungary. He was a pupil of Abraham Samuel *Sofer at the Bratislava yeshivah. From 1885 he served as dayyan in his native town. Brody became known for his insistence on the strict observance of the law, and in particular took a stand against circumvention of the law of usury. He set out his uncompromising attitude in an essay called "Neshekh ve-Tarbit" (Ha-Maggid, 23 (1879), nos. 34–38), in which he opposed the practice, then customary, of a shetar iska (an agreement between a lender and borrower in connection with an interest-bearing loan applied for trading purposes). Despite his conservative outlook, he took a positive attitude in support of Zionism, to which he devoted an essay, "Derishat Ẓiyyon" (first published in D.Z. Katzburg's Tel Talpiyyot, 12, 1904), and containing some of his homiletical and halakhic novellae. He also wrote a work called Divrei Shelomo ha-Yisre'eli, the manuscript of which was in the possession of his son Ḥayyim, chief rabbi of Prague. Brody was the son-in-law of Solomon *Ganzfried, the author of the Kiẓẓur Shulḥan Arukh.
bibliography:
Ben-Menahem, in: Sefer ha-Mizrachi, Koveẓ le Zikhro shel J.J. Reines (1946), 174–5; Weingarten, in: Mizpeh (1953), 457; eẒd, 1 (1958), 359–60.
[Elias Katz]