הרב לוי בן חביב

Rabbi Levi ibn Chaviv (c. 5240/1480–c. 5301/1541), known as the Maharal bach (Maharalbach), stood at the head of the chachamim of Yerushalayim in the generation after the Spanish expulsion. He was born in Zamora, Spain, to Rabbi Yaakov ibn Chaviv, author of the Ein Yaakov, a descendant of Rabbi Yosef Chaviva, author of the Nimukei Yosef. In the expulsion the family fled to Portugal, where as a youth he was forced to outward conversion; he escaped at the first opportunity to Salonika, where he returned openly to the faith of his fathers, learned under his father and the city’s chachamim, and completed the printing of his father’s Ein Yaakov.

After years in Salonika, with stays in Damascus and Aleppo, he settled in Yerushalayim in 5285/1525, and his Torah soon placed him at the head of its community. There he became the bar plugta of Rabbi Yaakov Beirav of Tzfas in the famous pulmus hasemicha: when Rabbi Beirav moved to renew the ancient semicha, the Maharalbach stood against the renewal, and his opposition largely determined that the practice lapsed again after Rabbi Beirav’s passing. His Kuntres HaSemicha preserves his side of that exchange.

A master of the calendar sciences, he wrote a commentary on the Rambam‘s Hilchot Kiddush HaChodesh, and left a collection of 147 responsa, printed together in Venice. His talmidim carried his Torah across the communities of the East — among them Rabbi Moshe Castro, who succeeded him in Yerushalayim; Rabbi Yaakov Castro, rav of Egypt; and Rabbi Shmuel de Medina, the Maharashdam of Salonika.