Rabbi Yitzchak Seckel Aryeh Leib Wormser was born in 1768 in Michelstadt, Hesse, the son of Rabbi Matityahu, a merchant of the Luria family, related to the Maharshal and the Arizal. It is said that his birth was announced to his father by a revelation of Elijah the Prophet. A child prodigy, he studied on his own until seventeen, then in Frankfurt at the yeshiva of Rabbi Nathan Adler, alongside the future Chatam Sofer, and under Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz, author of the Haflaah.

Like his teacher Rabbi Nathan Adler, he adopted an ascetic life and turned to Kabbalah; at eighteen he vowed to abstain from all animal products, and kept that vow until his death. Around 1790 he returned to Michelstadt, where he headed a yeshiva of some seventy students and served as district rabbi until 1822.

Known as the "Baal Shem of Michelstadt", he was, like the Baal Shem Tov in Eastern Europe, a tzaddik and kabbalist. Jews and non-Jews from all over southern Germany came to him for blessings and advice. He denied having supernatural powers, saying that all he did was natural and "with the help of God", and gave natural remedies and sometimes amulets; tradition credits him with many cures. In 1825 his house and large library were destroyed by fire.

He passed away on 3 Tishrei 5608 (1847).