אברהם די בוטון

Rav Chiya Avraham ben Rav Moshe di Boton, called after his sefer the Lechem Mishneh and known in English sources as Abraham de Boton, was a rav, posek and rosh yeshiva among the chachamim of Salonika in the sixteenth century, and one of the foremost commentators on the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam. He was born to Rav Moshe, of the descendants of the exiles of Spain, and learned under the Maharshdam, Rav Shmuel de Medina. During a dangerous illness the name Chiya was added to him — Chiya, life — and at times he signed with it. He served for a period as rav in Polia. Among his talmidim the best known were Rav Shmuel Chayun and Rav Shabtai Yonah.

His best known work is the Lechem Mishneh, printed in Venice in 5369/1609: a commentary on the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah that fastens above all on those places where the Rambam appears to stand against the Talmud, uncovering many such difficulties that none before him had noticed, and laboring by every path of interpretation to settle the seeming contradictions. He weighs the Rambam against the other rishonim and against the commentators who came before him — Rav Vidal of Tolosa, author of the Maggid Mishneh, and Rav Yosef Karo in the Beit Yosef and the Kesef Mishneh. The Chida writes that he had begun his work before he knew that the Kesef Mishneh existed, and once he came to know of it he brought it in as well. Rav David Conforte in Kore HaDorot brings that his own rebbi, Rav Mordechai Kalai, said that he and Rav Avraham had written the commentary together, a claim that appears in no other place. His second work is Lechem Rav, in which were gathered the teshuvot to the halachic questions he was asked over the years, published by his grandson Avraham in Izmir in 5420/1660.

He was niftar in a plague and was buried in Salonika. It is told that he was niftar on a Friday and brought to kevurah so close to sunset that it appeared Shabbat had already entered; when those accompanying him grieved at having been forced to be mechalel Shabbat for his burial, the sun came out and it was clear to all that Shabbat had not yet come in. His sons Rav Meir di Boton, Rav Yaakov and Rav Aharon and their descendants continued in the rabbanut in Turkey and in Eretz Yisrael, and the Lechem Mishneh is printed in the standard edition of the Mishneh Torah.