הרב יוסף בן לב

Rav Yosef ibn Lev (c. 5263/1503–c. 5340/1580), the Maharival, was among the great poskim of the Ottoman lands in the golden generation of its chachamim — dayan, rosh yeshiva in Salonika and Constantinople, and a byword for psak that bent to no one. Born in Monastir, where he first served as rav and dayan, he left for Salonika after protesting an act of extortion within the kehillah — a foretaste of his life’s pattern. In Salonika his standing was immediate: at about thirty-four his signature appears on a communal proclamation third in order, after Rav Yosef Taitatzak and Rav Yosef Karo, elders far his senior.

His integrity cost him dearly. As av beit din he set himself against the wealthy and the powerful of the city, and when a communal strongman — a returned anus who ruled the kehillah with a hard hand — met the rebuke of the rabbanim, Rav Yosef ibn Lev stood at the front of the fight and suffered years of persecution for it. He moved at last to Constantinople, where he stood at the head of a great yeshiva and taught the generation’s rabbanim.

His She’eilot u’Teshuvot Maharival, in four volumes, became one of the pillars of Sephardi psak — cited constantly by the poskim of the Ottoman world and beyond, the record of a mind exacting in the sugya (he was famed for his depth in the Tosafot, and a slight to the honor of Rabbeinu Yitzchak of Corbeil once set off a storm) and of a spine that never learned to bend.