Joseph Karo

Joseph Karo, called the Maran ("our master"), was the greatest codifier of Jewish law since Maimonides. His [Shulchan Aruch](/judaism/library/books/shulchan-aruch) — the "Set Table" — became the accepted code of halakha for the whole Jewish world, and remarkably he was also a mystic who recorded visits from a heavenly mentor.

From exile to Safed Born in Spain (or Portugal) and exiled as a child in the expulsion of 1492, Karo lived in the Ottoman lands before settling, like Luria, in the mystical community of Safed, where he headed a great academy and served as chief rabbi.

The Beit Yosef and the Shulchan Aruch Karo's monumental first work, the Beit Yosef, is an exhaustive commentary tracing every law to its Talmudic sources through the major authorities. From it he distilled the Shulchan Aruch (1565), a concise, practical code arranged in four parts covering daily life, festivals, family law, and civil and ritual matters. Because Karo generally followed the Sephardic authorities, the Polish sage Moses Isserles (the Rema) added glosses (the *Mappah*, "tablecloth") giving the Ashkenazic practice; the two together made the Shulchan Aruch the shared code of both communities — a model of Sephardi and Ashkenazi difference preserved side by side, not adjudicated.

The mystic Karo also kept a mystical diary, the *Maggid Meisharim*, recording teachings he received from a *maggid* — a heavenly voice he identified with the personified Mishnah. That the supreme legal codifier was also a visionary mystic captures the world of sixteenth-century Safed.

Legacy The Shulchan Aruch remains, to this day, the authoritative framework of traditional Jewish law, studied and applied across Orthodox communities worldwide. Joseph Karo joined the rigor of the law and the fire of Kabbalah in one towering life.