הרב מרדכי יפה

Rav Mordechai Yoffe (c. 5290/1530–3 Adar 5372/1612), known as the Levush or the Baal HaLevushim after his great halachic work, was a rav, posek and rosh yeshivah among the chachamim of Bohemia and Poland. Born in Prague to a family that traced its descent from Rashi, he learned under Rav Shlomo Luria, the Maharshal, and Rav Moshe Isserles, the Rema, and studied Kabbalah under Rav Mattityahu Delacrut, together with philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. In English sources the family name appears as Jaffe or Joffe.

He headed a yeshivah in Prague until 5321/1561, when the Jews were expelled from Bohemia and he moved to Italy, where he lived more than a decade in Mantua and Venice and deepened his knowledge of astronomy and the sciences. Returning to Poland, he served as rav of Horodna (Grodno), then of Lublin and of Kremenetz; in 5352/1592 he took the rabbanut of Prague after the Maharal left it, and from 5359/1599 until his passing he was rav of Posen. He was among the leaders of the Vaad Arba Aratzot, the Council of Four Lands.

His name lives in the Levush Malchut — the “Levushim,” ten works each titled Levush, after the pasuk in Megillat Esther that describes Mordechai going out in royal robes. He labored on them close to fifty years, setting out to write a work midway between the two extremes he saw before him: the vast Beit Yosef of Rav Yosef Karo on the one side, and on the other the Shulchan Aruch with the Rema’s glosses, which he felt too brief. The first five Levushim run across the four chelkei Shulchan Aruch, giving the reasons behind the halachah; the others are a commentary on Rashi and the Re’em on the Chumash, derashot, a commentary on the Rambam‘s Moreh Nevuchim, a work on the laws of Kiddush HaChodesh, and one on the Kabbalistic Torah commentary of Rav Menachem Recanati.

The Levush was for years a popular sefer of halachah among Ashkenazi Jewry, and though later glosses on the Shulchan Aruch came to overshadow it, poskim continue to rely on it. Among his talmidim were Rav Yissachar Ber Eilenburg, author of the Be’er Sheva, and Rav Yaakov Koppelman, author of the Ohel Yaakov on the Sefer HaIkkarim. He was niftar in Posen in 5372/1612.