The life and influence of Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel, known as the Rosh, affected the two major spheres of diasporic Judaism of his time, the Ashkenazi (Franco-German) and Sephardic (Hispanic-Mediterranean) communities.
Born around 1250 in West Germany, Rabbi Asher studied under the famous Tosafist Rabbi Meir of Rotenburg, had eight children, and wrote one of the earliest codifications of Jewish law.
In the middle of his life he escaped the persecutions of medieval Christian Europe, settling in Spain, where Jews prospered materially and Jewish study flourished during Spain's golden age.
Despite arriving in exile impoverished, Rabbi Asher's erudition and genius quickly earned him a position of prestige and influence. In 1304, he was invited to serve as the spiritual leader of the Jews of Toledo, where he established a Talmudic academy and transplanted the Ashenazi Tosafic system of study and analysis. He also introduced the traditionalism and piety of the early Ashkenazi Hasidim (reversing the secularist tendencies of certain segments of Sephardic Jewry).
Rabbi Asher passed away in Toledo on the 9th of Cheshvan in the year 1327 CE.
I am preparing a thesis about Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel (Rosh) and mainly about his family after the expulsion of Jews from Toledo.
I am expecting to be in contact with persons having family name like: harosh, arosh, benaroch, benarouch, Barros, or any similar derivation.
Your help will be really appreciated
David