יעקב בן חביב

Rav Yaakov ben Shlomo ibn Chaviv (c. 5210/1450–5276/1516), known in English sources as Jacob ibn Habib, was among the great chachamim of Spain, the leader of the kehillah of the Spanish exiles in Salonica, and the author of the Ein Yaakov. He was born in Zamora in Castile, learned Gemara in his youth under Rav Shmuel Valensi, and stood at the head of one of the great yeshivot of Spain in the city of Salamanca. With the expulsion from Spain he fled with his family to Portugal, where they remained until the decree of expulsion reached that country as well in 5258/1498; he then moved to Salonica and led the great kehillah of the exiles there. The chachamim of his generation called him gadol hador, mofet hador and hagaon.

In Salonica he laid down many takanot in communal matters, above all in hilchot ishut and in the questions that arose from the anusim. In his leadership he sought to preserve the heritage of the exiles even where their minhagim were not the minhag of the place, which at times brought him into machloket with the local chachamim. He apparently wrote a biur on the Tur, and a number of his teshuvot are preserved in the writings of the gedolim of the period, among them Rav Eliyahu Mizrachi and the Maharashdam.

The Ein Yaakov he wrote in the house of Don Yehuda Benveniste, who opened his rich library to him; he drew as well on the library of Yehuda’s brother Don Shmuel, rich in chidushim on the Talmud from many of the great commentators. Out of these he gathered the aggadic passages of the Bavli, and many from the Yerushalmi, and set a commentary upon them. His aim was to open the ethical spirit of Talmudic literature to the wider public and to set out a clearer understanding of the aggadah, and his notes answer the charges brought against the Talmud in his day. Woven into the commentary are words of mussar that carry the feeling of the generation of the expulsion.

The printing began in 5276/1516 in the press of Yehuda Gedaliah, the author himself going carefully over the proof sheets, and he was niftar in Salonica just as the first two sedarim, Zeraim and Moed, came off the press. His son Rav Levi ben Chaviv, the Maharalbach, who went up to Eretz Yisrael and stood at the head of the chachamim of Yerushalayim, completed his father’s sefer, though the work appeared without the author’s notes to the last four sedarim. More than a hundred editions of Ein Yaakov have appeared, and the addition of Rav Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, HaBoneh, has been printed in every one since 5444/1684. In many kehillot of eastern Europe it was the practice to fix a shared shiur in Ein Yaakov in the shul for the balebatim, in the break between Mincha and Maariv.