יהודה בן שמואל הכהן קנטריני

Rav Yehuda (Leon) ben Shmuel HaKohen Cantarini (c. 5410/1650–5454/1694) was a rav and physician of Padua, of the famed Cantarini family of that city — a house that joined Torah and medicine for generations. His practice ran wide among Jews and gentiles alike, and its crown was its chessed: his poorest patients he visited four times a day, and took nothing from them.

Within the kehillah he taught Talmud, in which his learning was deep, and served as a darshan. A letter of his that survives — addressed to Rav Yaakov of the house of Levi concerning a din Torah in which he was involved — testifies both to his mastery of the sugyot and to a Hebrew of classical purity. When he was niftar in Nisan 5454/1694, his nephew, the famed Rav Yitzchak Chaim Cantarini, wrote his hesped.