Biography
Rav Yitzchak ben Yaakov de Lattes was a chacham of Provence in the fourteenth century, scion of one of its great learned families — grandson of the Rav Yitzchak de Lattes who corresponded with the generation of the Rashba, and kinsman of the author of the Sefer HaHashlamah. His name is preserved above all by his chronicle, known as Shaarei Tzion: a history of the mesorah and its bearers, built on the Meiri’s Seder HaKabbalah, which records the chachamim of Provence of his generation and the one before it — and is for many of them the only source we have.
Gedaliah ibn Yachya quotes his chronicles throughout his Shalshelet HaKabbalah, and the Chida in his Shem HaGedolim. Beside the chronicle he wrote Toledot Yitzchak and a commentary on the Torah in the allegorical derech of Provence, Kiryat Sefer. His pages close the record of one of the great Torah civilizations — the Provence of the Meiri and the Baal HaMaor — written down by one of its last sons while its memory was still warm.
Where traditions differ. Sources differ on when he completed his chronicle — 1340 or 1372. He is to be distinguished from the sixteenth-century Rav Yitzchak de Lattes of Italy, with whom he is sometimes confused.
רבי יצחק בן יעקב די לאטיש היה מלומד יהודי בפרובנס במאה ה-14, מחבר הכרוניקה "תולדות יצחק" שחלקה המפורסם בשם "שערי ציון" המבוסס על "סדר הקבלה" לרבי מנחם המאירי מהווה מקור חשוב לתולדותיהם של חכמי פרובנס בדורו ובדור שלפניו.
Isaac ben Jacob de Lattes was a rabbi who lived in Provence. In 1372 he completed his Kiryat Sefer, including two parts, Shaarei Tzion and Toledot Yiẓḥaḳ. The first is a chronicle in which he gives valuable information concerning other Provençal authors and discusses the history of tradition, while the second is an allegorical commentary on the Torah.
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