הרב משה מטראני

Rav Moshe ben Yosef di Trani (5260/1500–5340/1580), known by his acronym as the Mabit, was a rosh yeshiva and posek among the chachamim of Tzfat in the sixteenth century. His family were of the Spanish exiles, tracing their line to Rav Yeshaya di Trani; his father reached Salonika in 5257, and Moshe was born there some three years later. He learned in Adrianople under Rav Yosef Fasi and under his uncle Rav Aharon di Trani, and as a young man went up to Eretz Yisrael, settling in Tzfat as the prime talmid of Rav Yaakov Berav. At about twenty-five he was set on Berav’s beit din and received semichah from his rebbi — together with Rav Yosef Karo, who had come to Tzfat in those same years.

For some fifty-four years the Mabit sat on the beit din of Tzfat, spreading Torah and answering shailot that reached him from across the Jewish world. He and Rav Yosef Karo were close, learning together and debating halachah, at times in sharp disagreement; after Karo was niftar the Mabit served five further years as av beit din. He stood in contact with the chachamim of his generation in the Ottoman lands — among them the Radbaz, Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi, and Rav Moshe Alshich — and joined the cherem that Don Yosef Nasi laid upon the port of Ancona in 5316.

Three of his sefarim were printed in his lifetime: Kiryat Sefer (Venice 5311/1551), which weighs, for every ruling of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, whether its root is d’Oraita or d’Rabbanan; Beit Elokim (Venice 5336/1576), on tefillah, teshuvah, and the foundations of emunah, which carries the first printed commentary on Perek Shirah; and Igrot Derech Hashem. His many hundreds of responsa were gathered by his sons and printed some fifty years after his passing. He was niftar on the last day of Pesach and left two sons: Rav Shlomo, a rav in Egypt, and Rav Yosef, a leading posek of Tzfat who wrote his father’s history in the introduction to his own Tzofnat Paneach.