Life
Joseph Karo (1488–1575), born as the Jews were expelled from Spain and settled at last in Safed, was both a towering legal authority and a mystic. His vast commentary Beit Yosef and its digest, the Shulchan Aruch ("Set Table"), organized the whole of Jewish law so clearly that — combined with the glosses of the Ashkenazi authority Moses Isserles — it became the accepted code for world Jewry. He also recorded mystical experiences of a heavenly mentor (maggid), uniting halakhic mastery with Kabbalah.