Rabbi Yosef ben Ephraim Karo - Baal HaShulchan AruchYahrzeit - 13 NisanBurial place - TzfatOn January 1, 1837, a terrible earthquake struck the Galilean city of Tzfat, reducing the entire city to ruins. But the living quarters of the house where Rabbi Yosef Karo — the "Mechaber" (compiler) and "Maran" (teacher of the nation) — had lived three centuries earlier remained completely untouched. The residents said the house was protected by the holiness of Rabbi Yosef. Apparently that protection has lasted to our own time: descendants of the sage still live in the three-story house, his synagogue stands beside it, and the southern parts of the house and synagogue have remained unchanged since the 16th century. The northern parts were rebuilt in 1857, twenty years after the earthquake.In the courtyard of the house there is still a cave in which Rav Yosef Karo, often together with his friend Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, would converse with an angelic teacher (a Maggid). Records of their conversations, written down by Rabbi Karo, were published more than half a century after his death under the title "Maggid Meisharim" ("Proclaimer of the Righteous"). The first part appeared in Lublin in 1646, the second in Venice in 1656. The kabbalist and historian Rabbeinu Chida states that only one-fiftieth of Rabbi Karo's manuscript was ever printed. And the rules of conduct recommended by the Maggid in the book are not meant to be followed by others — they were addressed only to Rabbi Yosef himself.Rabbi Karo's synagogue todayThe future great codifier was born in Toledo, Spain, in 1488. As a four-year-old child, he went into exile along with most of Spanish Jewry, first to Portugal, from where they fled further in 1497. Fortunately, the children were not taken from Rav Ephraim Karo, unlike many other Portuguese exiles. After long wanderings, the family found refuge in Istanbul — Sultan Bayezid II had invited the refugees to settle in his empire, saying: "They tell me Ferdinand of Spain is a wise ruler?! He impoverished his own land to enrich mine!"His father suffered greatly from their wanderings and died young, but he managed to teach the talented boy a great deal — Rabbi Karo often cites the analyses of his father, a great Talmudist. After his father's death, Yosef's uncle, a renowned commentator on the Torah, became his teacher and guardian. His work "Toldot Yitzchak" ("The Life of Yitzchak") was very popular — it was reprinted four times within its first fourteen years!Toledo — the city where Rav Yosef Karo was bornRabbi Yitzchak Karo, who had moved to Portugal before the general expulsion, was also forced to flee to Turkey in 1497; several of his sons perished during their wanderings. He not only taught his nephew but cared for him as if he were his own son, and may even have formally adopted him. They were very close — later on, the Mechaber frequently cited his uncle's rulings and responsa.Rav Yosef quickly became known as an authority in Jewish law — already in his youth he was called upon to answer questions on various areas of halacha. After marrying the daughter of Rabbi Chaim ibn Ashbalag, Rav Yosef moved to Edirne (Bulgarian Adrianople) — a city that had served as the capital of the Ottoman state from 1365 to 1451. Together with his father-in-law, they founded a yeshiva in which young men not only studied the Law but also entered into the hidden depths of the Torah. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, an outstanding kabbalist and poet (author of "Lecha Dodi"), lived in Edirne. He became Rabbi Karo's chavruta; according to Rav Shlomo's own testimony, the heavenly Maggid appeared to the two friends many times already in Edirne. Sadly, a few years later an epidemic broke out in Edirne, claiming the lives of Rav Yosef's young wife and three sons — life did not spare the sage.After the death of his family, Rabbi Karo left Edirne — he apparently settled for a time in Nicopolis, a major military and administrative center of the Ottoman Empire that the Turks had taken from Bulgaria a century and a half earlier. A few years later he married the daughter of Rav Yitzchak Saba, granddaughter of the outstanding Spanish kabbalist Rav Avraham Saba, who had also found refuge in Edirne. With his young wife, Rabbi Karo moved to Salonika, where he founded a yeshiva.There he grew close to Shlomo Molcho — a visionary who had first been a Marrano and secretary to the Queen of Portugal, and later became a refugee and rabbi. When Molcho was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in Mantua, despite the protest of Pope Clement VII, Rabbi Karo said with sorrow: "I would wish to accept such a death for the sanctification of the Creator's Name!"Rav Karo's fame as a codifier was already at its height when, back in 1522, still in Edirne, he began working on his commentary "Beit Yosef" on the foundational halachic code "Arba Turim" by Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher. The work continued for some two decades — and another ten years were spent on editing and verification! Of course, it is hard to say exactly where the writing ends and the editing begins, but twenty-eight years passed before its first publication.Fame, authority, wealth… none of these had any effect at all on Rabbi Yosef. Which is hardly surprising — for more than fifty years he was visited by a Maggid who called itself the "Mishnah" (the Jewish Law): "I am the Mishnah, speaking through your mouth." Maran measured himself not against other people, but against the will of the Almighty toward mankind — and so envy, flattery, and self-satisfaction were foreign to him.A person should strive to be "second only to the King" — and Rabbi Yosef Karo was the very embodiment of such a person. You will not find the slightest trace of self-assurance in the words of the man called "the greatest codifier of all generations." Here is how he describes the birth of the method by which "Beit Yosef" and "Shulchan Aruch" ("The Set Table") were created:"I understood that I should not establish the law through reasoning and proofs drawn directly from the Talmud, for that is what the authors of the Tosafot, the Rambam, the Rashba, and the Ran did, and each of these sages maintained his own position. How could I presume to intervene in the disputes of the great ones by bringing forward my own arguments? So I decided to rely on the three pillars of the law upon which the entire House of Israel rests: the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh. And I said to myself: wherever two of them agree with one another, the law shall be established according to their opinion — except in those rare cases where the majority of other sages disagree with these two, and where all the communities are accustomed to act otherwise… And this is the best path for establishing the law."In 1536 he made aliyah to the Land of Israel; before Rosh Hashanah, in the month of Elul, he reached Tzfat, where Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz had settled a year earlier.Tzfat, one of the four "holy cities of Israel" (along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias), had by this time become the Jewish center of the Holy Land. The position of the Jewish community there was far more secure than in Jerusalem, where Jews were subjected to constant extortion and attacks. Jewish agricultural settlements surrounded Tzfat, some of which, apart from brief periods of exile, had existed there since the days of the Kingdom of Judah. According to local tradition, a yeshiva of Noach's son Shem and his great-grandson Ever once stood in Tzfat, where our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob studied.A yeshiva opened in Tzfat in 1524 — and Rabbi Karo was destined to turn it into a center of Jewish scholarship for the entire world, described in glowing terms by many students and visitors. In its best years it had more than 200 students, taught by the leading sages of the generation.The chief rabbi of Tzfat was Rabbi Yaakov Beirav (1474–1546), who, like Rabbi Karo, was a native of Toledo, Spain. Rabbi Karo became a student and close associate of Rabbi Beirav and was soon accepted as a judge on the city court led by his teacher — apparently the most authoritative court among the people at the time. Relying on the Rambam's formulation that "if the sages of Israel, acting together, designate several individuals and grant them semicha, those individuals may in turn pass semicha on to others," Rav Beirav gathered all the rabbis of Tzfat, and they unanimously ordained him. He in turn ordained four other outstanding sages: Rabbi Yosef Karo, Rabbi Moshe Trani, Rabbi Moshe Galante, and Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (the latter two were students of Rabbi Karo). Rabbi Karo then passed semicha on to another student, Rabbi Moshe Alsheich, who in turn passed it to his own student, Rabbi Chaim Vital.In Tzfat, Rabbi Karo completed his work on "Beit Yosef" — a detailed commentary on the "Arba Turim." Whereas the Baal HaTurim himself usually avoided final rulings, Rabbi Karo pursued a different goal — he sought to present the Law in its final, practical form for everyday use, and so he composed a concise guide to Jewish law, the "Shulchan Aruch." With the addition of the Ashkenazic "notes" of the Rama of Cracow — the Rema — it gradually became the primary legal code of our entire people.Interestingly, in his responsa Rabbi Karo always cites not the "Shulchan Aruch" but the far more detailed and expansive "Beit Yosef." Published in parts between 1550 and 1559, "Beit Yosef" was warmly received — leading rabbis immediately began writing commentaries and clarifications on it. And, naturally, there were also objections — many had "something to say," whether against the method of analysis itself (deciding by majority vote), against the very idea of a single unified code of law ("for the lazy"), or against specific conclusions… All the more so since, of the three "pillars" — the Rambam, the Rif, and the Rosh — the first two were Sephardic, and the Sephardic tradition thus carried more weight. The Rema, too, began with a commentary on the "Arba Turim," arguing with Rabbi Karo, whom he held in the highest regard. Only afterward, on this basis, did he create his own "notes" supplementing the "Shulchan Aruch."The objections were sometimes very profound, as with the Rema, and sometimes simply absurd. For instance, it was claimed that the "Shulchan Aruch," published in 1565, was the product of an old man's declining powers. Yet the outstanding work "Kesef Mishneh" ("Double Silver") — published ten years later (1575), shortly before the author's passing, and which has since remained the primary commentary on the Rambam's great work "Yad HaChazakah" — was never subjected to such attacks… After the death of his second wife (in 1564), Rabbi Karo married again, this time the daughter of a Jerusalem rabbi — and at the age of 80, this supposedly "feeble" man fathered a son, Yehuda…Rabbi Karo also wrote "Bedek HaBayit" ("Repair of the House"), a supplement to the "Shulchan Aruch" in which he responded to the objections raised against it. But he cared so little for his own prestige that this book was only published in Salonika in 1605, thirty years after the author's death. Twenty years after his father's passing, Rabbi Yehuda published his letters and responsa; three years after that (1598), "Klalei HaTalmud" ("Principles of the Talmud") appeared — a study of the methodology of the primary work of the Oral Torah.In 1546, after the death of Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, Rabbi Karo became the rabbi of Tzfat and head of the rabbinical court. And yet, despite being a great mystic and the most authoritative Jewish codifier of his time, in 1570 he — then 82 years old — asked the 36-year-old Arizal for permission to attend his lessons! Though he sometimes fell asleep during them — the Arizal once remarked that Rabbi Karo felt more drawn to the logical Kabbalah of his own student, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero. Maran spoke of the Arizal as "a prophet of the generation, for whom nothing in the world remains hidden." And he arranged for his son to marry the Arizal's daughter.Rabbi Yosef Karo departed this world just before Pesach, on 13 Nisan 1575, at the age of 87. And to us he left the gift of unity among communities, binding the nation together through a single, universally accepted Law. Kabbalah and logical analysis, humility and greatness, connection to the higher worlds together with a firm footing on the ground, and an understanding of the needs of those living here — all these came together in him harmoniously and inseparably.May the merit of this tzadik protect Am Yisrael!(Reb Arye Yudasin - https://evreimir.com/166892/sredstvo-ot-zemletryasenij/)
