Rabbi Shmuel Laniado, the Baal ha-Kelim רבי שמואל לניאדו
the preacher of Aram Tzova who named all his books after Temple vessels
Aram Tzova called him ha-Darshan—the preacher. His commentaries grow out of the midrash: Keli Chemdah runs through the Pentateuch, Keli Yakar through the Early Prophets, Keli Paz through Isaiah; together they are the kelim, the vessels, as he himself named them. The Keli Chemdah was printed at Venice in 1594–95—by such editions his prime is dated; exact years of birth and death the sources do not give, and we invent none.
He was a contemporary of the great men of Safed—Alshech, Chaim Vital—and the Aleppo of his day lived in that same circle: the city stood on the caravan road from Safed to Baghdad. In his city, in the grotto beneath the great synagogue, lay the Keter Aram Tzova—the codex Maimonides had relied on.
The Laniados led Aleppo's community into the twentieth century—three centuries running: the list of that family's rabbis is nearly a list of the city's generations.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Keli Chemdah, Venice, 1594–95 — his commentary on the Pentateuch; his prime dated by the editions
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — rabbi of Aleppo in the later sixteenth century; the Laniado dynasty
Basis: Talmud and midrash.