ר"י מיגאש

Rabbi Yosef ben Meir HaLevi ibn Migash (4837/1077–4901/1141), known by his acronym as the Ri Migash, was among the greatest of the rishonim of Sefard (Spain) — rosh yeshiva of Lucena, commentator on the Talmud, and posek. Born in Seville, he came to Lucena at the age of twelve to learn under the Rif, and remained his foremost talmid for fourteen years. Shortly before his passing the Rif gave him semicha and appointed him — passing over his own son — as his successor. The Rif wrote of him that even in the generation of Moshe Rabbeinu his like was not found. He stood at the head of the yeshiva of Lucena for thirty-eight years, and talmidim streamed to him from Spain and North Africa; Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi learned in the yeshiva in his days and praised him in verse.

Among his talmidim was Rabbi Maimon the dayan, father of the Rambam — and the Rambam himself regarded the Ri Migash as his teacher, writing in the introduction to his Peirush HaMishnayos that “the heart of that man in Talmud is awesome to whoever looks into his words and the depth of his reasoning… as if to say, there was no king like him before him.” Wherever the Rambam writes “my teachers ruled” without naming them, the reference is to the Ri Migash and the Rif.

He was the first of the chachmei Sefard whose chiddushim on masechtot of the Talmud reached us — the model later developed by the Ramban, the Rashba and the Ritva. Of his writings there remain his responsa, over two hundred teshuvot originally written in Judeo-Arabic, and chiddushim on Bava Batra, Shevuot and Ketubot; his words are brought throughout the Shittah Mekubetzet. In psak he taught reverence for the mesorah of the geonim: the one who rules from the teshuvot of the geonim, he wrote, is more praiseworthy than the one who trusts his own reading of the sugya.