Rabbi Yosef Karo רבי יוסף קארו
author of the Shulchan Aruch, the accepted code of Jewish law
Rabbi Yosef Karo was born in Toledo in 5248 and was carried out of Spain as a small child in the expulsion of 5252. His family passed through Portugal and Turkey; he grew up in Adrianople and Salonica, and around 5296 went up to Safed, where exiles and kabbalists were gathering.
For twenty years he wrote the "Beit Yosef", an immense commentary on the Arba'ah Turim tracing every law from the Talmud through the Rishonim to his own day. He then condensed it into the "Shulchan Aruch", the Set Table: terse rulings without discussion, "so that a young man may learn them by heart". He did not imagine he was writing the definitive code—but so it became, especially once Rabbi Moshe Isserles added the "Mappah", the tablecloth of Ashkenazi custom. Since then the Shulchan Aruch with the Mappah has been the shared law of the whole people.
Chain of transmission
Baal HaTurim—Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher → Rabbi Yosef Karo → Rema—Rabbi Moshe Isserles
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shulchan Aruch — the “set table” — the code by which the Jewish world lives
- Beit Yosef — the commentary on the Tur out of which the code grew
- Kesef Mishneh — the commentary on Rambam’s Mishneh Torah
- Maggid Meisharim — his mystical diary
Basis: documents and evidence.