Person · 5265–5349 AM · 1505 CE — 1589 CE
The Maharashdam—Rabbi Shmuel de Medina רבי שמואל די מדינה
the judge of Salonika in whose answers one reads the empire's economy
A student of Yosef Taitatzak and Levi ibn Chaviv, head of the Salonika yeshiva; the author of the Lechem Mishneh and Chaim Shabtai were his students. His responsa number nine hundred and fifty-six. The first two parts he printed himself; the full set his son published.
His city was a city of exiles, where each congregation—Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Calabria—kept its own custom and its own court; the Maharashdam's responsa are the chronicle of those worlds grinding into one.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa of the Maharashdam, 956 answers — the court of the largest Jewish city in the world
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the teachers and the count—not "thousands"
Basis: Talmud and midrash.