ר' יצחק בן אבא מרי

Rav Yitzchak ben Abba Mari (4882/1122–4953/1193), known to all as the Baal HaIttur and to some as the Baal HaDibrot, was among the poskim of Provence, a native of Marseille. His father was his rebbi, a great man in Torah whose rulings and explanations are set into the Ittur, and who seems to have represented the Jews of his city before the government; some hold that ‘Abba Mari’ was not a name at all but the phrase a son used of his father and teacher. He learned also from his uncle, whom he calls chavivi in the Ittur, and who by a note in one manuscript had learned before the Rif.

He was counted a gadol from a young age. In his introduction he writes that he composed the laws of shechitah and terefot at his father’s bidding when he was seventeen, and around the same time a short work on tzitzit at the request of the nasi Rav Sheshet Benveniste, one of the notables of Barcelona. He corresponded with Rabbeinu Tam, putting his doubts before him, and with Rav Avraham ben Yitzchak of Narbonne, author of Sefer HaEshkol; the latter’s son-in-law, the Raavad, brought questions of his own to him.

Those two early pieces became part of Ittur Soferim, the code that occupied him some twenty-three years, from 4930/1170 until close to his passing. It runs in three parts: dinei mamonot together with the laws of kiddushin and gittin; then shechitah and permitted meat, milah, tzitzit, tefillin and the marriage ceremony; and last the Aseret HaDibrot, ten sections covering Sukkot, lulav, hallel, shofar, Yom Kippur, megillah, Chanukah, chametz, matzah and maror, and the general laws of yom tov. He commands both Talmuds and a body of geonic teshuvot much of which is unknown today, and he weighs each question for himself without deference to age or reputation, not sparing the Geonim or the Rif whom he otherwise held in high esteem. His introduction is woven through with lines from Sefer Yetzirah.

The Rashba, the Rosh and the Mordechai cite the Ittur, but once the Tur spread it fell out of use, and Rav Yosef Karo was the first after a long gap to draw on it again; only its first part was in print until the whole code appeared in Lemberg in 5620/1860. Rav Yitzchak also wrote Meah She’arim, a hundred lettered notes on the halachot of the Rif on Nashim and Nezikin, printed at the back of those volumes in the Vilna Shas. His son Rav Avraham is mentioned in Sefer HaManhig, and his nephew Rav Moshe ben Rav Shmuel wrote Minhag Marseilles on the tefillah customs of that city.