Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg

Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg (1150 – 22 February 1217^[1][2]), also called Yehuda HeHasid^[3] or 'Judah the Pious' in Hebrew, was a leader of the Chassidei Ashkenaz, a movement of Jewish mysticism in Germany considered different from the 18th-century Hasidic movement founded by the Baal Shem Tov.^[4]

Judah was born in the small town of Speyer in the modern day Rhineland-Palatinate state in Germany in 1150 but later settled in Regensburg in the modern day state of Bavaria in 1195. He wrote much of Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious), as well as a work about Gematria^[5] and Sefer Hakavod (Book of Glory), the latter has been lost and is only known by quotations that other authors have made from it. His most prominent students were Elazar Rokeach, Isaac ben Moses of Vienna author of Or Zarua and perhaps also Moses ben Jacob of Coucy (according to the Hida).