Person · 5445–5492 AM · 1685 CE — 1732 CE
Rabbi Yaakov Culi—the Me'am Lo'ez רבי יעקב כולי
he wrote the people a book in their own tongue—and the people read it for two hundred years
A Jerusalemite by birth, grandson of Moshe ibn Chaviv; he came to Constantinople to publish his grandfather's works—and stayed as dayyan under Rabbi Yehuda Rosanes, whose books he published in turn after his death.
The first volume of the Me'am Lo'ez, on Bereshit, appeared at Constantinople in 1730. Bereshit he finished; he died in 1732 over Shemot, short of Terumah—the current "he died over Bereshit" is imprecise. Others carried the work on from his papers, and the set grew for another generation. The year of birth is given as 1685 and as 1689.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Me'am Lo'ez, Constantinople, from 1730 — the Torah in Ladino for every home
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Jerusalem, Constantinople, the death over Shemot and the two readings of the birth year
Basis: Talmud and midrash.