Shulḥan ‘arukh (Set Table)

Joseph Karo was an influential mystic best known for his authoritative codification of modern halakhic practice. Karo was a central member of kabbalist circles in sixteenth-century Safed, where he also headed a yeshiva. Born in the Iberian Peninsula shortly before the expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal, Karo was raised in Ottoman Turkey and departed for Safed in 1536. His Shulḥan ‘arukh (Set Table)—printed together with Moses Isserles’s Mapah (Tablecloth)—still forms the basis of traditional halakhic decision-making today. It is a digest of Karo’s own four-volume Bet Yosef, which adopts the organization of Jewish law into the categories established by Jacob ben Asher (1270–1343) in his Arba‘ah turim (Four Rows). In Magid mesharim (Speaker of Truth), Karo records the instructions given to him by a supernatural guide, called a magid.

Also known as the Rema, Moses Isserles was the head of the yeshiva in Kraków. He studied with his father and with the most prominent authority of his time, Shalom Shakhnah of Lublin. Isserles was acknowledged as a rabbinic authority at a young age and appointed to the rabbinic court, but was also famous for his disputes with some of his contemporaries. Isserles’s major work is his legal code, Darkhe Moshe (The Ways of Moses) which appeared in both complete and abridged versions (1692, 1760), but he is best known for his glosses on Joseph Karo’s Shulḥan ‘arukh (Set Table). Isserles also wrote responsa and biblical commentary.