In the domain of dialectics Rabbi Meïr found a successful rival in the person of Samuel Edels, known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRSHO[101] (died 1631), who occupied the post of rabbi in Posen, Lublin, and Ostrog. In his comprehensive expositions to all the sections of the Talmudic Halakha (_Hiddushe Halakhoth_, "Novel Expositions of the Halakha"), he endeavored principally to exercise the thinking faculties and the memory of his students by an ingenious comparison of texts and by other scholastic intricacies. The dialectic commentary of Edels became one of the most important handbooks for the study of the Talmud in the heders and yeshibahs, and is frequently used there in our own days. His commentary on the Talmudic Haggada is strewn over with Cabalistic and religio-philosophic ideas of the conservative Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the middle of the seventeenth century the authority of the _Shulhan Arukh_, as edited by Isserles, had been so firmly established in Poland that this code was studied and expounded with even greater zeal than the Talmud. Joel Sirkis (died 1640) delivered lectures on Jewish Law on the basis of the _Turim_ and the _Shulhan Arukh_. He wrote a commentary to the former under the name of _Beth Hadash_ ("New House," abbreviated to BaH), and published a large number of opinions on questions of religious law. He held the Cabala in esteem, while condemning philosophy violently. His younger contemporaries devoted themselves exclusively to the exposition of the _Shulhan Arukh_, particularly to the section called _Yore De`a_,[102] dealing with the Jewish ritual, such as the religious customs of the home, the dietary laws, etc. Two elaborate commentaries to the _Yore De`a_ appeared in 1646, the one composed by David Halevi, rabbi in Lemberg and Ostrog, under the title _Ture Zahab_,[103] and the other written by the famous Vilna scholar Sabbatai Kohen, under the name _Sifthe Kohen_ ("Lips of the Priest").[104] These two commentaries, known by their abbreviated titles of TaZ and ShaK, have since that time been published together with the text of the _Shulhan Arukh_.