Joseph ben Ephraim Karo

Spanish-born Jewish scholar and rabbi

• Born: 1488
• Birthplace: Toledo, Castile (now in Spain)
• Died: March 24, 1575
• Place of death: Safed, Palestine (now Zefat, Israel)

Karo codified Jewish law in a 1564-1565 work known as the Shulḥan arukh, an abridgment of his more extensive major work, the Bet yosef, from 1542, which continues to be the authoritative source for Orthodox Judaism.

Early Life

Joseph ben Ephraim Karo (EE-fray-ehm KAHR-oh) and his family moved to Portugal around the period of the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Because of traditional religious prejudice and cultural and economic resentment, European countries began to expel Jews in the thirteenth century. In 1497, Jews were again subject to expulsion, this time from Portugal, and the Karo family moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). The Ottoman Empire during this period was somewhat open to Jewish immigration, and the family settled into their new homeland.

Karo’s father, Ephraim, also was a noted Talmudic scholar, and Joseph spent a portion of his youth studying under his tutelage. On Ephraim’s death, Joseph continued his studies with Isaac Karo, his father’s brother.

During the ensuing years, Karo moved among several Turkish cities, including Salonika and Nikopol. In these travels, Karo became influenced by leading Kabbalists of the period, such as Solomon Alkabetz and Joseph Taitazak. Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism and piety, included a doctrine of spiritual perfection and was common among scholars of the period. It was also while studying with Alkabetz that Karo developed the tradition of remaining up during the night to study Torah during the holiday of Shavuot, an all-night ritual known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Tradition includes the Kabbalistic belief that it was during one of these sessions that the maggid, a heavenly visitor not unlike an angel or a heavenly voice, first visited Karo. Karo considered such visits to be common during the remainder of his life.

Life’s Work

Karo lived in Turkey approximately forty years. During this period of his life, and probably because of the influence of both Halachah (Jewish law) and Kabbalah, he began his most important work, the Bet yosef . Started in 1522, the work would require some twenty years to complete.

In 1536, Karo left Turkey and eventually made his way to Safed in Palestine. At the time, Safed was a center of Jewish life in the Ottomon Empire and a gathering point for the study of Kabbalah. Equally practical, it also contained one of the few printing presses in existence.

Soon after arriving in the Middle East, Karo began to study with Rabbi Jacob Berav. Berav at the time was involved in a controversy dealing with the proper procedure for ordination of rabbis, a process known as semikhah, or the laying on of hands. It was Berav’s belief that the tradition had its origin with Moses, and that only by following the ritual properly could a person be considered properly ordained. Karo became one of the few scholars ordained by Berav. When Berav left Safed in 1538, Karo was acknowledged as the leading scholar in the city.

In addition to becoming head of the Safed yeshivah, or Jewish academy, Karo became the leading authority on questions concerning Halakhah. He also continued his work on the Bet yosef, which he completed in 1542.

The Bet yosef represented an update of Halakhic code and rulings in a way applicable to Karo’s contemporaries. The first attempt to arrange Jewish law in a topical manner was carried out by Moses Maimonides in the twelfth century (Mishneh Torah, 1180; The Code of Maimonides, 1927-1965). As comprehensive as Maimonides’ fourteen-volume work became, it was criticized by some for its lack of Talmudic references and its inability to address new disputes or legal questions. In the fourteenth century, Jacob ben Asher completed an update on the legal code known as the Arba’aṭurim (1475; four rows). More popularly known simply as the Ṭur, Asher’s work divided Jewish law into four sections that covered blessings, dietary law, marriage, and civil law. Karo followed Asher’s model for the Bet yosef.

The Bet yosef was intended as a complete modernization and codification of Jewish law. Asher’s work dealt with religious law in force during his own time. Karo’s work was in part a commentary on the Ṭur and was a clarification of later rabbinic opinions and rulings. In addition, he attempted to explain the basis of Halakhic decisions described in the code. Karo followed the same chapter divisions used by Asher. It is in part Karo’s use of reference material, however, which allowed this work to avoid much of the controversy associated with earlier codification of the law.

The Bet yosef, although completed in 1542, was published between 1550 and 1559. The major criticism of the work, however, lay in its very comprehensiveness. Karo continued with the writing of an abridged version in a manner accessible to persons who were not scholars. The result was the Shulḥan arukh (1565; Code of Jewish Law , 1927). The Shulḥhan arukh used the same format as the Bet yosef, but in a simpler fashion.

While clearly an important influence on Jewish law from its inception, the Shulḥan arukh nevertheless showed the Sephardic bias representative of its writer’s origins; it failed to include Ashkenazy, or Eastern European, customs or law. In 1569, Moses ben Israel Isserles, a rabbi from Poland, attempted to address this problem by writing a commentary that dealt with Ashkenazy customs. Known as Mapah (pb. 1571), it became incorporated into the Shulḥan arukh as an appendix written in different script. Together, the works became the basis for Jewish law as it exists into the twenty-first century.

With the completion of his more famous work, Karo continued his scholarship with a commentary on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. Karo’s work, known as the Kesef mishneh (pb. 1574-1576), still represents the standard commentary on eight of the fourteen volumes from the Mishneh Torah, and includes Karo’s analysis of commentaries by others concerning the other six volumes.

Karo’s work was also influenced by his study of Kabbalah. He apparently kept a diary that described his visitations by the maggid and his views about mysticism and its effects on theology. The diary was published subsequent to Karo’s death and provides insight into the Kabbalistic tradition extant at the time.

Karo was married either four or five times. While he apparently suffered the loss of several children over the course of his life, he was able to father at least one of his sons while in his eighties.

Significance

Prior to Karo’s codification, Halachah, or Jewish law, was represented by a collection of decisions and interpretations of rabbis through the ages. The scholar Maimonides had brought a semblance of order to the understanding of the law in his legal work, but this work represented Sephardic laws and customs primarily, and it generally lacked Talmudic references. Legal questions and responses often fell outside the boundaries set by his work. The Ṭur updated the law but still represented a period more than two hundred years before Karo.

The existence of an array of sources and commentaries on the law was also a source of frustration for rabbinic scholars. While Karo, in theory, was attempting to collate and correct errors found in the Ṭur, he hoped also to produce a definitive description of the law what he believed would be represented as “one law and one Torah.”

Karo’s works therefore provided a contemporary discussion of Jewish law, in a format readily accessible to both scholars and laypersons. If someone wished to study the law in greater depth, however, the Bet yosef and its commentaries are best. Not surprisingly, Karo’s legal decisions were always based on sources from the Bet yosef. Though several additional commentaries were added in subsequent years, more than four centuries after the work was published, the Shulḥan arukh remains the written authority for Jewish law.

Bibliography

Bridger, David, ed. The New Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Behrman House, 1976. Contains a concise biography of Karo’s life.

Encyclopedia Judaica. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Contains an extensive biography and describes the influence on Karo played by rabbis and scholars of the period.

Freedman, Benjamin, et al. Duty and Healing: Foundations of a Jewish Bioethic. New York: Routledge, 1999. Morality and ethical dilemmas in modern Judaism. Some examples delineated in the context of the Shulḥan Arukh.

Klein, Michele. Not to Worry: Jewish Wisdom and Folklore. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003. The author draws on Jewish tradition, philosophy, and folklore (Kabbalah) in the face of an uncertain world.

Telushkin, Joseph. Jewish Literacy. New York: William Morrow, 1991. Discussion of the role and significance of Karo in the evolution of an understanding of Halachah.

Werblosky, R. Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976. Biography of Karo that includes discussion of his use of Kabbalah and his belief that he was visited by a heavenly mentor.