ר' משולם בן יעקב

Rabbeinu Meshullam ben Yaakov HaKohen of Lunel (d. 4930/1170), called Rabbeinu Meshullam HaGadol, stood at the center of the golden age of Torah in Provence. He led a great beit medrash in Lunel around which gathered the circle known to the ages as the chachmei Lunel, and when the traveler Binyamin of Tudela passed through around 1159 he found Rabbeinu Meshullam and his five sons at the head of a wealthy, learned and famous community.

His yeshiva raised some of the greatest of the rishonim: the Raavad, author of the hasagot on the Rambam, and Rabbi Zerachiah HaLevi, the Baal HaMaor, were among his talmidim. He stood in close friendship with Rabbi Avraham ben Yitzchak, the av beit din of Narbonne, who addressed teshuvot to him and spoke of him with the highest regard; his own piskei halacha are brought in the Sefer HaTerumos. Of the sefarim he wrote, one survives — Isur Mashehu, on the laws of forbidden mixtures.

His reach extended beyond halacha: it was Rabbeinu Meshullam who encouraged Rabbi Yehuda ibn Tibbon to render the Chovot HaLevavot from Arabic into Hebrew — the translation through which klal Yisrael learns that sefer to this day — and ibn Tibbon wrote admiringly of his breadth and his great library. His son Rabbi Asher of Lunel, called “Rabbi Asher HaParush,” was a noted chacham in his own right, author of hilchot Yom Tov.