אליהו מזרחי

Rav Eliyahu Mizrachi (c. 5215/1455–5286/1526), known as the Re’em, was the chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire and the author of the foremost commentary on Rashi‘s commentary on the Torah. Born in Constantinople to a Romaniote family — the old Greek-speaking Jewry that preceded the Spanish exiles — he learned Torah under Rav Eliyahu HaLevi and the sciences under Mordechai Comtino, becoming a master of mathematics and astronomy who wrote on arithmetic, on Euclid, and on Ptolemy’s Almagest; it was said he was the first to derive a method for extracting roots. On the passing of Rav Moshe Capsali in 5255/1495 he was raised to Chacham Bashi, the crown rabbinate of the empire, which he carried for the rest of his life — the very years in which the exiles of Spain streamed into Turkey, whose absorption he labored to ease.

He wrote the Sefer HaMizrachi: the great supercommentary on Rashi on the Torah, which uncovers the Talmudic and midrashic sources beneath every comment, elucidates every difficulty, and stands in Rashi’s defense against the hasagot of the later commentators, above all the Ramban — while not hesitating to differ with Rashi himself where the sugya demanded. Printed by his son after his passing, it became one of the pillars of Chumash learning: the Maharshal and the Maharsha wrote on it, abridgements spread it, and the Siftei Chachamim drew from its waters. Beside it stand his Tosafot on the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol and his responsa, the Teshuvot Re’em, a principal halachic source of the generation of the expulsion.

In psak he was fearless toward practices without foundation — a degraded custom, he wrote, is void for every man, and no custom can bind one who does not accept it against his will. He was niftar in Constantinople at a great age; among his descendants were the Rishon LeTzion Rav Nissim Chaim Moshe Mizrachi and his brother, early chachamim of Yerushalayim.