Rabbi Yehuda Rosanes—the Mishneh LaMelech רבי יהודה רוזאניס — משנה למלך
chief of the rabbis of Constantinople; author of the Mishneh LaMelech on the Rambam
He was born in Constantinople in 1657, a dozen or so years after Shabbetai Tzvi had stirred the city, and grew up in a community that had not yet cooled. He studied under the younger Rabbi Yosef Trani and became chief of the rabbis of the capital.
The Mishneh LaMelech is his examination of hard passages in the Rambam: he poses the question, gathers the sources, weighs the answers and often leaves the question open—for which yeshiva students love him to this day. The book was printed after his death, in 1731, and since then it has stood in the margins of the Mishneh Torah in every edition. His second book, Parashat Derachim, holds sermons in which the Torah is examined by the rules of the Talmud.
When in 1713 Nechemiah Chayun came to Constantinople with a Sabbatean book, Rabbi Yehuda led those who condemned it. He died in Constantinople in 1727.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Mishneh LaMelech — the examination of the Rambam and the posthumous edition of 1731
- The Parashat Derachim — the sermons
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Constantinople, the Chayun affair, the years 1657 and 1727
Basis: documents and evidence.