דוד קונפורטי

Rav David Conforte (5378/1618–Kislev 5450/1690), also spelled Conforti, was a rav, posek and chronicler of Salonika, known for his bibliographic work Kore HaDorot. He was born in Salonika to a family of rabbanim and talmidei chachamim. His early teachers were Rav Yehuda Girasi, Rav Yisrael Ze’evi and Rav Baruch Angel; his principal rebbeim were Rav Mordechai Kalai and Rav Daniel Estrosa, both of Salonika. Later he learned kabbalah under Rav Yefet HaMitzri and philosophy under Rav Levi Pasriel, and he sat as well in the yeshiva of Rav Shlomo Algazi in Smyrna and before Rav Yosef Escapa. He married a granddaughter of Rav Menachem di Lonzano, the daughter of his son Adonikam.

In 5404/1644 he set out for Eretz Yisrael, pausing for about a year in Cairo to learn in the beit midrash of Rav Avraham Iskandari and passing through Aza, where he visited the paytan Rav Yisrael Najara. He spent two years in Yerushalayim, from 5406/1646 to 5408/1648, apparently reaching Tzfat as well, where he learned and taught in the yeshiva founded by Rav Yaakov Beirav, before returning to Salonika. In 5412/1652 he went up a second time, now with his family, and founded a beit midrash of his own in Yerushalayim. The next nineteen years of his life are not known. In 5431/1671 he was appointed rav of Cairo; he is known to have been in Smyrna as well. His responsa were lost, but individual teshuvot survive in the sefarim of contemporaries, among them Noam HaLevi of Rav Avraham HaLevi, then rav of Egypt.

Kore HaDorot records the chachamim and authors from the close of the Talmud down to his own day. It is built of three parts: the first two, quite short, cover the generations before the expulsion from Spain, while the third treats the rabbanim after the expulsion, arranged in eleven generations. He drew on the earlier chronicles — the Sefer HaKabbalah of the Raavad, the Sefer Yuchasin of Rav Avraham Zacuto and the Shalshelet HaKabbalah of Rav Gedalya ibn Yachya — and was the first to gather the names found in printed and manuscript responsa. The work was probably written in Egypt around 5443/1683. Its title may have been given by Rav David Ashkenazi of Yerushalayim, who carried the manuscript from Egypt to Europe; it was first printed in Venice in 5506/1746 in a faulty edition, and re-edited by David Cassel in Berlin in 5606/1846 for the Mekitzei Nirdamim society. The Chida cites it in his own writings. Gabriel Conforto, a Turkish talmudist mentioned in the responsa of the seventeenth century, was probably his son.