יוסף קולון

Rav Yosef Colon ben Shlomo Trabotto (c. 5180/1420–5240/1480), known throughout the world of halacha as the Maharik, was the foremost posek of Italian Jewry in the fifteenth century. He was born in Chambéry, then the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, into the Trabotto family — a line that reached back to Rashi and was noted for the chachamim it raised in every generation. The family had come there after the expulsion of the Jews from the French kingdom in 1394, and he received his learning in the Talmudic method of medieval French Jewry. He learned chiefly under his father, Rav Shlomo, a Talmudist and a mekubal, and under Rav Mordechai Natan.

In the early 5210s/1450s he left Chambéry for the Italian Piedmont. For some years he moved from place to place, taking his living as a melamed. About 5229/1469 he served as rav in Piove di Sacco, and afterward as rav and rosh yeshiva in Bologna and then in Mantua, where Rav Yehuda Messer Leon headed a yeshiva as well. A sharp dispute arose between the two, and the ruler of the city banished them both. He then settled in Pavia, where he served as rav until he was niftar at about sixty and where he was buried. His decisions were sought from far off — from Ulm and Nuremberg, and from Kushta.

His responsa, arranged in shorashim and anafim, 197 shorashim in all, are among the foundation sefarim of halacha. They were gathered after his passing by his son-in-law Rav Gershon Treves and his talmid Rav Chiya Meir ben David, and first printed in Venice in 5279/1519. They are marked by encyclopedic knowledge and orderly analysis, laboring to lay bare the principles beneath his sources; established minhag holds a place of its own in his thinking, and he stands as the defender of the distinctly French school within Ashkenaz. The Rambam’s Mishneh Torah occupies first place in his writings. His influence runs through the later development of psak, above all in the Rema’s hagahot on the Shulchan Aruch.

Falsely informed by a meshulach on behalf of the people of Yerushalayim that Rav Moshe Capsali, the chacham bashi of Turkey, was lax in matters of gittin, he wrote three letters to the leaders of the kehilla of Kushta threatening to place Capsali under the ban. The reports rested on a calumny, and a bitter exchange followed in which the leading rabbanim of Germany, Italy, and the East took part; once the Maharik saw that an intrigue had been worked upon him he did not hesitate to make amends, and on his deathbed he charged his son Peretz to travel to Kushta and ask Capsali’s forgiveness in his name. Beside the responsa he wrote a commentary on the Torah and chiddushim on the Gemara, on the Rambam, and on the Semag. Among his prominent talmidim were Rav Ovadia of Bartenura and Rav Eliyahu Delmedigo; his grandson was Rav Eliezer Ashkenazi, author of Maasei Hashem.