Search Results - Yosef Karo

Born in Toledo, Spain in 1488^[2] In the year 1492, when he was only four years old he was forced to flee Spain with his family and the many other thousands of Jews that were forcibly being expelled from their homes where they had lived for many hundreds of years. His family went to Portugal after the Spanish expulsion in 1492.^[3] After the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal in 1497, Karo went with his parents to Nikopolis in current day Bulgaria, where he received his first instruction from his father, who was himself an eminent Talmudist. He married, first, Isaac Saba's daughter, and, after her death, the daughter of Hayyim Albalag, both of these men being well-known Talmudists. After the death of his second wife he married the daughter of Zechariah Sechsel (or perhaps Sachsel), a learned and wealthy Talmudist.

Already as a young man, he gained a reputation as a brilliant Torah scholar. He began by writing an explanation on the Rambam's Mishnah Torah. He called his work the Kesef Mishnah. Here he showed and explained the Rambam's sources, since the Rambam only brought down the halachos, leaving out this most important bit of information.

Between 1520 and 1522 Karo settled at Adrianople, where he probably met the enthusiast Solomon Molcho, who stimulated his mystical tendencies. When the latter died at the stake in 1532, Karo also was filled with a longing to be "consumed on the altar as a holy burnt offering," to sanctify the name of God by a martyr's death. Like Molkho, Karo had fantastic dreams and visions, which he believed to be revelations from a higher being. His genius, he thought, was nothing less than the Mishnah personified, which instructed him because he had devoted himself to its service. These mystical tendencies probably induced Karo to emigrate to Palestine, where he arrived about 1535, having en route spent several years at Salonica (1533) and Constantinople.