Rabbi David ben Zimra, known as the Radbaz (רדב”ז aka Ridbaz) was born in Spain in 1479. At the age of 13, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, his family moved to Israel and settled in the city of Safed (צפת). There, rabbi David learned with Rabbi Yosef Zaragosi, the Rabbinical leader of the Jewish community of Safed at the turn of the century. In 1517 he moved to Egypt where he was appointed as the Hakham Bashi, or Chief rabbi of Egypt, a position that he held for over forty years. He rejected to work for the community professionally because he feared that if his sustenance would depend on the community he would not be able to rule with objectivity. The Radbaz then dedicated himself to commerce and became a very successful merchant, dealing with wheat and leather in the international market. He amassed a great fortune, which allowed him to be financially independent form the community and even to found and support his own Yeshiba.  Some of the students of that Yeshiba were great luminaries, like rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari haQadosh), rabbi Betsalel Ashkenazi (שיטה מקובצת), and the Radbaz’s most prominent student and spiritual heir, Rabbi Ya’aqob Castro (מהריק”ש), one of the most famous rabbis in Egypt at the time .

Upon attaining the age of 90, the Radbaz resigned the chief rabbinate in Egypt and moved to Erets israel. He settled in Safed and became an active member of the rabbinical court of rabbi Yosef Caro. The Radbaz died in Safed in 1573.  His inheritance, by his request, was distributed among the poor, making a special provision for Tora scholars.

The Radbaz wrote many books and close to 3000 rabbinical responsa (Questions and answers)

 One of his most far reaching responsa was the one that deals with the origin of the Jews of Ethiopia, which he considered as descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the lost Ten Tribes.

For many centuries the Rabbis have heard about a tribe in Ethiopia, which claimed being of Jewish ascendant. But for the rabbis this questions was always a theoretical question, and never a practical one. In the time of the Radbaz this question became a practical matter when a group of African captives was brought to the slave market in Egypt. A woman , with her two sons, claimed that she was Jewish, from the tribe of Dan.

The Radbaz writes (She-elot Utshubot haRadbaz, 4:219): “Once there was a Cushite woman from the land of Cush, otherwise known as Habbash [=Ethiopia] who was taken prisoner along with her two sons, and she was bought by one Reuben.   We asked her what her status was, and she answered that she had been married and these were her sons by her husband, whose name was so-and-so, and this son was so-and-so. [She said that] the enemy came and killed all the people who had been in the synagogue, and the women … they took captive…”

For the purposes of this and another fascinating investigation [i.e., the origin of the Nile] the Radbaz studied the testimonies of Ethiopian scholars and he collected evidence from two Jews, one of them coming from Ethiopia, Rabbi Isaac al-Habbashi, and the second testimony from a local Egyptian merchant who had traveled to Ethiopia and met these “Jews” in their land.

The Radbaz analyzed this case from many different angles. For example, he found that these Jews did not keep some regular Mitsvot, like lighting candles before Shabbat. His argument was that the Jews from Ethiopia, they either came to their land before the rabbis issued the decree of hadalaqat nerot, or that they were descendants of the baytosim, Jews who rejected the oral tradition.

Finally, he says that the status of the Ethiopian Jews is similar to the Karaites Jews:  they should accept to follow Jewish tradition, and should come under the law of redeeming captives, (pidyon shebuim), thus, the Falash Mura should be bought from the slave market and set free.

Four hundred years after the passing of the Radbaz, and based on the Radbaz’s responsa the Falash Mura were once again considered as Jews, and brought into the State of Israel.

The rabbi who made this ruling was no other than Rabbi obadia Yosef z”l. In February 9, 1973, Rabbi Obadia, then Chef rabbi of Israel, wrote an historical responsa in which he said that “based on the Radbaz… the Ethiopian tribes Falasha or Falash Mura, should be considered Jews… they should be saved from assimilation, rescued and brought to Israel under the laws of return [an Israel law that guarantees Israeli citizenship for every Jews], they should be reeducated to follow Jewish tradition, and participate in the rebuilding of our Holy Land, thus [fulfilling the words of the prophet :] “and the sons will return to their land”.

These are the original words of the responsa of rabbi Obadia Yosef

בהסתמך על הגאון הרדב”ז בתשובה (שאלות ותשובות דברי דוד הלכות אישות סימן ח) שאלו הפלשים בלי ספק משבט דן, ורק מפני שלא היו ביניהם חכמים מבעלי הקבלה תפסו להם פשטי המקראות, ודינם כתינוק הנשבה לבין הגוים, ודינם כישראל שאנו מצווים לפדותם ולהחיותם לכן באתי למסקנה שהפלשים הם צאצאי שבטי ישראל שהדרימו לכוש…והחלטתי כי הם יהודים שחייבים להצילם מטמיעה ומהתבוללות, ולהחיש עלייתם ארצה, ולחנכם ברוח תורתנו הקדושה, ולשתפם בבניין ארצנו הקדושה ושבו בנים לגבולם

Today, in a great part thanks to the Radbaz, more than 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel.

Rabbi Shelomo Serilio (שיריליאו או סיריליאו) was born in Spain, before the expulsion of 1492.  From Spain, rabbi Serilio came to Constantinopla (today Istanbul), where he studied with rabbi Binyamin HaLevi, the author of zeqan aharon, and later on with the famous Rabbi Ya’aqob ibn Habib, the author of ‘en yaaqob (see here).  After a few years, rabbi Serilio moved to Salonica, in those days one of the most important cities in the Jewish world.

Around 1530 many Jews, and especially those who left Spain and Portugal, came to Erets Israel, fulfilling the dream of their ancestors. Among other famous rabbis who came from Salonica to Israel we can mention Rabbi Yosef caro, the author of the Shulhan ‘arukh, Rabbi Shelomo Alqabets, Rabbi Moshe MiTerani, (the Mabi”t), etc. A new Jewish settlement was established in Tsefat  (Safed) under the leadership of Rabbi Ya’aqob Berab ( see this).  Rabbi Serilio did not have any official rabbinical position in Safed, although we know of his involvement in a few debates that took place there. For example, Rabbi Serilio wanted to be lenient in the subject of “basar halaq”, by authorizing the nefiha (=inflating the animals lungs, despite it having fibers sirkhot, to declare it kosher if no perforations are found) in order to make meat more accessible, cheaper, to the Jews of Safed. In this, he was following the customs of the Jews of Salonica. Rabbi Ya’aqob Berab, however, rejected this leniency.

Rabbi Shelomo Serilio is famous for his commentary on the Talmud of Jerusalem. He was the first rabbi to write a commentary on one entire Talmudic Order (Seder Zera’im) of the Jerusalem Talmud. As we know, there are two sets of Talmud:  one written in Babylon (from 200 to 500 of the Common Era) and the other one written in Eres Israel (ca. 370 of the CE). One of the main differences between the Babylonian Talmud and the Talmud of Jerusalem is that the later deals extensively with the Mitsvot related to agriculture, also known as commandments which applied to the land of Israel (מצוות התלויות בארץ), while the Babylonian Talmud has no Gemara for these tractates. One of the  practical commandments Jews had to observe was the  Mitsva of shebi’it, the Biblical Mitsva that requires letting the land rest every seven years. Now, that the Jews were back in Israel, those Mitsvot wer again practical. And although Maimonides refer to them, the details of the practical applications of this Mitsva, required a renewed halakhic revision. One illustration: In those days, the Jews had no direct involvement in working the land. All the agriculture work was done by gentiles, who owned those lands.  Still, the question was if those fruits which were grown in the land of Israel, in the year of Shemita by non Jews, were subject to the laws of Shebi’it. Rabbi Serilio explained that they are. They would need Be’ur (=discarding those fruits, when that specific fruit cannot be found anymore in the fields) and that these fruits are exempt from terumot and ma’aserot.

Today, that BH we are again in Erets Israel, the commentaries and the halakhic rulings of rabbi Serilio on Shebi’it are an essential tool for reference and probably, one of the most authoritative Halakhic precedents for contemporary issues.

Rabbi Serilio moved to Yerushalayim around 1546. In Jerusalem he completed his commentary on Zera’im. He was among the most notorious rabbis of the city. He died in ca. 1555.

You can download here the booklet Minhague Shebi’it which contains the summary of Hilkhot Shemita in 5 pages, by Rabbi Serilio. This booklet was printed in Jerusalem, 1937, one year before the year of Shemita in Erets Israel.

Rabbi Isaac (Yitshaq) Caro was born in the city of Toledo, Spain in 1458.  His father was Rabbi Yosef Caro haZaqen, a great Rabbi and Talmudist of his generation. Rabbi Isaac was a student of rabbi Isaac Canpanton.

 In 1492, the year of the expulsion of the Jews from spain,  Rabbi Isaac escaped to Portugal and established himself in Lisboa. In 1497, the Jews were given the choice to convert or leave. So, rabbi Isaac left with his family to Jerusalem. That trip was very tragic for him: he lost his wife and all but one of his children. He did not reach Yerushalayim but established himself in the city of Constantinople, Turkey (modern Istanbul). According to some versions, at a later period Rabbi Isaac embarked again to Israel. And he arrived to Damascus, Syria, where he was appointed as a dayan (Rabbinical judge). At the end of his life, he finally reached Erets Israel, probably Tsefat (Safed) where his nephew rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575), the famous author of the shulhan ‘arukh, lived.

 His most famous book was Toledot Yitshaq, a commentary on the Tora. Since he could not afford the expenses of printing a whole book, Rabbi Isaac would publish his work in small pamphlets, Parasha by Parasha.

 He is also the author of Hasde David, a book of Derashot (sermons) on philosophy and the Agada (=the non-halakhic aspect of rabbinic literature)

 Rabbi Yosef Caro mentions his uncle, Rabbi Isaac, many times in his books. For example, Bet Yosef, OH, 31, where he discuses the obligation to wear tefilin in Hol haMo’ed, the intermediate days of the holidays of Pesah and Sukkot. After he brings the different opinions he says that his uncle, rabbi Isaac wrote that the tradition in Sepharad was to not using Tefilin in Hol haMoed.

 Rabbi Yosef Caro  also mentions Rabbi Isaac in two more cases. One of them regarding the debate about yibbum vs. halitsa. If when a husband dies without children, his wife should marry his brother (Levirate marraige) or perform a special ritual called halitsa  by which the widow is freed from the biblical obligation of marrying her brother-in-law, and then be able to marrying whoever she wants.

Rabbi Yosef Caro also quotes his uncle in a discussion about renting the house of a non-Jew, in that case, one of the officials of the city, for a matter concerning ‘erubin, the boundaries of cities and neighborhoods  to the effects of the laws of hotsa-a in Shabbat.

 After quoting his uncle in these cases in eben ha’ezer 392, Rabbi Yosef caro writes: “These responsa are from my uncle, the great rabbi R. Isaac Caro z”l, and I copied them next to my own responsa”.

Many of Rabbi Isaac’s responsa and his sermons are still in manuscripts in libraries and museums in Oxford and New york.

 Recently, professor Shaul Regev from Bar Ilan University published a new book with some of Rabbi Isaac Caro unpublished sermons. See here

 To download the book Toledot Yitshaq, printed in Amsterdam 1708, click this.

Rabbi Emanuel Abohab was born in the city of Porto, Portugal, in 1555. He was the great-grandson of the famous rabbi Isaac Abohab, also known as the Gaon of Castile (d. 1493).

Rabbi Abohab lost his parents at an early age and he was raised by his grandfather, Abraham Abohab. In Portugal the Jews had to live like anusim (crypto-Jews) or Marranos, unable to practice Judaism. In 1585 he emigrated to Italy and since then he dedicated his life to encouraging anusim living as Catholics to escape from Portugal and Spain and embrace Judaism in Italy and, from 1596, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

He lived for  short time in various Italian cities, such as Pisa and Spoleto. His writing career began in an unusual way. In 1608 he wrote a treatise on the famous Latin phrase “Humanum est peccare, angelicum se emendare, diabolicum perseverare”, “To err is human, to amend [our mistakes] is angelic, and to persevere [in one’s sin] is perverse.” In this short treatise Rabbi Abohab exposed this sentence from the Jewish perspective of Teshuba. By doing this, he wished to to reach out to the crypto-Jews, who knew Latin better than Hebrew, and persuade them to amend their ways and come back to Judaism.

In 1615 he established himself in Venice,  a major center of Jewish life at the time, where he was invited to serve as the rabbi of the Jewish-Portuguese community of that city. That year he began his most important book, “Nomology or Legal Discourses”.

Towards the end of his life, Rabbi Abohab led a group of Yehudim to Erets Israel and he finally settled in Yerushalayim. There, he also continued his work to encourage anusim to come back to their origins. He died in 1628.

This book was originally written in Spanish and first published in Amsterdam in 1629, a year after the author’s death. The book “Nomology or Legal Discourses” deals primarily with the subject of Tora she be’al pe, commonly known as the “Oral Law”, which Rabbi Abohab with an excellent judgment calls “Mental Law”, i.e., the explanation, exposition and application of the Mitsvot, as our Sages taught.

This topic was very critical for the anusim since most of them were educated in convents, and although they knew very well the Biblical text, all they had learned was the Christian explanations of it, and they lacked the mental apparatus to process the Tora in the original Jewish way.

One example: In his book Rabbi Abohab dedicates two chapters (Section 2, Chapter 18 and 19) to denounce how contemporary Catholic translations deliberately deviated from the literal meaning of the Biblical text to suit their dogmas of faith. This sort of things contributed to the “mental” switch, from the Jewish to the gentile mode of understanding the Bible.

The book “Nomologia” (nomology means “the science of the laws of the mind”) is divided into two sections.

The first section contains 25 chapters and 30 chapters the second section.

Some illustrations

Section 1

1: 9: (original text) “En el qual se prueva como es impossible entenderse el perfecto modo de la observancia de los preceptos divinos sin la doctrina de los Sabios”(“In which it is shown that it is impossible to understand  the perfect way for the observance of the divine precepts without the doctrine of the Elders”)

From Chapter 15 to 21 the author shows that the Mental Law is necessary for the observance of mitsvot, and as an example he brings the Rabbis’ calculation of the complex Hebrew calendar, which combines the cycles of the sun and moon.

In chapters 22, 23 and 24 he exposes the 13 principles of Halakhic interpretation (hermeneutics) of Rabbi Yshma’el.

Section 2

This section explains that HaShem gave us the written Tora and the “Mental Law”; how is the level of prophecy reached; the superior level of Moshe Rabbenu’s prophecy and the history of the uninterrupted transmission of the “Mental Law” since Moses until his own days. One of the last rabbanim mentioned is Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575)

More, from the original Spanish text:

Chapter 14 (on the authority of the Sanhedrin). “En el que se trata el principio y institucion del Supremo magistrado de los setenta y un Senadores [Sanhedrín] y de la obediencia que le devia todo el pueblo de Israel”

Chapter 26 (on the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain) “En el que se cuenta el destierro de los iudios de los reynos de Castilla en el año de cinco mil y dozientos y cinquenta y dos, y el de Portugal que sucedió de alli a seis años,las causas que movieron a aquellos reyes a desterrarlos etc.”

To download the book “Nomologia” click  here

NOTE: When reading this book, the reader should know that in old Spanish (and English) the letter “S” at the beginning or in the middle of the word, is used to be written taller than today’s “s”, and it gives the feeling of being an “f”.

Rabbi Isaac Canpanton was born in Castilla, Spain (probably in Zamora) in 1360.  Rabbi Canpanton was known as “The Gaon of Castilla”. He witnessed the decline of Spanish Jewry, especially after the persecutions, mass-killings and forced conversions of the 1390’s, and the outrages of Vicente Ferrer y Ferrand Martinez.
Rabbi Canpanton directed the Yeshiba of Zamora for many years. He was succeeded by one of his disciples, rabbi Shemuel al-Valensi (=from Valencia) who headed this prestigious Yeshiba until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Rabbi Canpanton probably wrote many books, but today we only know of one of his books,  Darkhe haTalmud (“A Methodology of the Talmud). Darkhe haTalmud is a short book which teaches the proper methodology to study and teach Talmud.  Incidentally, it also shows the way the Talmud was studied in Sepharad for centuries.  This book affected the way the Sephardic communities studied the Talmud after the expulsion from Spain in Salonica, North Africa and the Middle East. Rabbi Ya’aqob Berab, for example, who was one of the luminaries of Tsefat (Safed) in the 16 century, taught Talmud in his prestigious Yeshiba, following strictly the methodology of Darkhe haTalmud. Rabbi Yaaqob Berab was the rabbi who ordained Rabbi Yosef Caro, the author of the Shulhan ‘arukh, with the renewed semikha. In the Bet Yosef (YD Siman 275), Rabbi Yosef Caro mentions rabbi Canpanton with much honor and respect:  “הרב הגדול החסיד הר’ יצחק קאפאנטו”ן ז”ל היה נוהג לעשות כן”.

Rabbi Canpanton lived a long life, 103 years. He died in Peñafiel, Spain,  in 1463.

ספר דרכי התלמוד לרבי יצחק קנפאנטון

The book Darkhe haTalmud contains 15 short chapters. Most of them deal with methodological rules, to train the student to develop an active and critical study of the Talmud.  Rabbi Canpanton insists, for example, that the student has to read the text at least three times, paying very close attention to the language (diyuq) before he engages into any of the commentaries.  When the student reads the text he must ask himself several (=ten) questions: Who are the protagonists of the debate (the suguia)? What is the goal of this particular text? What novelty it comes to teach? etc. Only after that, he should proceed to read the commentaries. One of the most important didactic rules the book systematically presents is, in my own words, “anticipation”. Rabbi Canpanton teaches the student to read carefully the debates, the questions or the comparison between the texts and stop before reading further. Once the student understands the question, he must try to arrive on his own at the possible answers and solutions, anticipating the solutions the Gemara will possibly offer. This didactic rule is very effective because by trial and error the student learns to analyze his own thinking and eventually he will be able to integrate into his own mind the sophisticated Talmudic thinking.

Darkhe haTalmud also teaches some practical techniques to improve one’s memory and focusing abilities.

On chapter 12 Darkhe haTalmud examines the ways to study the commentators of the Talmud, for example, Nahmanides, Rishba. The author exhorts the reader to read the commentaries analytically, trying to discover what is the main novelty the author tries to teach.

On Chapter 14 the author clarifies some of the less known Talmudic terminologies.

The book is very short (less than 60 pages) , and written in a very easy Hebrew.
To download the book Darkhe haTalmud, click here.

Rabbi Ya’aqob ibn Habib was born in Zamora, Spain in 1460. He was one of the greatest rabbis and Talmudist of his time and the head of the Yeshiba in the city of Salamanca, Castilla (Central Spain). When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 he and his family
left to Portugal. But in 1496 the Jews were given the choice to convert to Catholicism or to abandon Portugal. Rabbi Ya’aqob left Portugal and settled in Salonica (today Thessaloniki, Greece) where he founded the new congregation of “Megoreshe Castilla”, the exiled from Castilla (Since those days Salonica became one of the most important and influential cities for Sephardic Jewry for centuries. Up until recent times the economic presence of the Jews was so important that the Salonica Port was closed on Shabbat. In 1943 more than 60,000 Jews –95% of the Jews of Salonica– were deported and killed in concentration camps. Today approximately 1,500 Jews live in Salonica).