הרב בצלאל אשכנזי

Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi (c. 5280/1520–c. 5352/1592), author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, was among the first of the Acharonim and the leading chachamim of Egypt and Yerushalayim in his generation. His father Avraham came from Ashkenaz and settled in Eretz Yisrael, where Betzalel was born; in his youth the family went down to Egypt, and there he learned under the Radbaz, Rav David ibn Zimra, having also learned under Rav Yisrael di Curiel. When the Radbaz went up to Eretz Yisrael, Rav Betzalel took his place at the head of Egyptian Jewry, where his authority was such that the ancient office of the nagid, long decayed into arbitrary privilege, came to its end in his day.

Around 5340/1580, after a struggle he waged for the community against a man who sought to lord over it, he left Egypt for Eretz Yisrael — first to Tzfat, where he headed a yeshiva, and then to Yerushalayim, where Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike, communities that did not ordinarily accept a single authority, placed him at their head. Fluent in the language of the rulers, he stood for the community before the authorities and labored to save the shul of the Ramban; he sent shluchim and went out himself as a shadar to Egypt, Syria, and Turkey to raise funds for Yerushalayim, fixing standing yearly collections in Damascus, and worked much for peace between the communities. In 5347/1587, when dispute arose in Yerushalayim over taxing talmidei chachamim, he stood with the rabbanim who ruled that scholars, who come to Eretz Yisrael out of love alone and can barely support themselves, are exempt. At the beginning of 5352 he went out once more on shlichut to Egypt and was niftar — whether in Egypt or in Yerushalayim is not known, and his burial place is unknown.

The Shitah Mekubetzet, also called Asefat Zekenim, gathers the words of the rishonim across much of Shas in the style of the Tosafot — the Ramban, the Rashba, the Ritva, the Raavad, Rabbeinu Baruch ben Shmuel, Rav Yitzchak of Chinon, older unprinted Tosafot, and glosses of the school of Rabbeinu Peretz — preserving commentaries that survive nowhere else. His own annotations, above all his corrections of the corrupted text of Seder Kodashim from manuscripts in his possession, were arranged into the commentary we have by his talmid Rav Shlomo Adeni. His teshuvot were printed in Venice in 5355/1595. His most famous talmid was Rav Yitzchak Luria, the holy Arizal; beside him stand Rav Shlomo Adeni, author of the Melechet Shlomo on the Mishnah, and Rav Avraham Monson, rosh yeshiva and dayan in Cairo. At his petirah his close friend, the paytan Rav Yisrael Najara, eulogized him as a holy man, a doer of great deeds, a rescuer of the oppressed, and a great leader.