2 Cheshvan · Yahrzeit
Yahrzeit/Hillula of Rabbi Shmuel de Medina – Maharashdam
Rabbi Shmuel de Medina - RaShDaM (רשד"ם) or Maharashdam (1505 – October 12, 1589), head of the Jewish community of Salonika.
Maharashdam was a Talmudist and writer from Salonika. He headed the city's Talmudic academy, from which emerged a whole generation of Talmudic scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries. His teachers were Joseph Taitazak and Levi ibn Habib, and among his classmates were Isaac Adarbi, Joseph ibn Lev, and Moshe Almosnino.
During a mission to Constantinople, he met the renowned grammarian Menachem Lonzano and studied with him for a time, and so he refers to him as his teacher (David Conforte, Kore ha-Dorot, Cassel ed., p. 44a).
Among Rabbi Shmuel's many students who achieved renown were Avraham de Boton, Yosef ibn Ezra, and Chaim Shabtai. He had disagreements with Yosef Karo and other rabbis in Safed, against whom he wrote a polemical letter (Ketav Tochacha). He passed away in Salonika. His grandson was Shmuel Chayun, author of Bnei Shmuel, novellae and responsa (Salonika, c. 1613).
In one of his responsa, he wrote that the Sephardic version of the liturgy (nusach Sepharad) is preferable to the Ashkenazic one, since it contains beautiful piyutim written by Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda HaLevi, and other poets.
Only the Jews of Italy and Yemen preserved the original form of the prayer book containing all the prayers of the yearly cycle ("Machzor ha-Shanah").