Description:
The name of Rabbi Barukh Schick of Shklov (1744–1808) does not figure in the pantheon of great eighteenth-century Jewish personalities, alongside those of R. Israel Ba′al Shem Tov, Moses Mendelssohn, and R. Elijah, the Vilna Gaon. Unlike the latter, his teachings were not distinguished by great originality or profundity, and they exerted rather limited influence. Indeed, Schick's name might well have fallen into total oblivion were it not for a few lines in the introduction to one of his books (a Hebrew translation of Euclid's Elements), in which he related certain remarks made to him by the Vilna Gaon in support of the study of science.