הרב יוסף טאיטאצאק

Rav Yosef Taitazak (5225/1465–5306/1546), known by the acronym Mahari Tatz and in English sources as Joseph ben Solomon Taitazak, was a posek, mekubal and rosh yeshiva who stood at the head of the Sephardic exile in the Ottoman lands. He was born in Castile to Rav Shlomo Taitazak and learned there in the same yeshiva as Rav Levi ibn Chaviv. With the expulsion from Spain in 5252/1492 the family crossed into Portugal, and from there to Italy, where he lived in Mantua and learned astronomy and philosophy. In 5267/1507 he came with his father and his brother to Salonica, and became head of the Portuguese kehillah of the city.

Rav Moshe Hamon, physician to Sultan Suleiman, built a yeshiva in Salonica at his own expense and set Rav Yosef at its head; he led it for forty years, and it was reckoned among the greatest yeshivot of the empire. From it came Rav Yosef Karo, Rav Shmuel di Medina (the Maharashdam), Rav Moshe Alshich, Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, Rav Eliezer Ashkenazi, Rav Yitzchak Adarbi and Rav Yosef ibn Verga. When Jews fled Salonica for Serres he served that kehillah as rav for some years, sitting in din alongside Rav Shmuel Almosnino and Rav Yosef Pasi, and the Turkish authorities recognized him as the chief halachic authority for the Jews — a standing that ordinarily belonged to the rav of Constantinople.

He held to the lenient side for the anusim (Jews who were forced to act as Christians) who reached Salonica and sought to return openly to their Yiddishkeit, and in dinei ishut, above all in the freeing of agunot, he stood against colleagues who wished to be stringent; klalim of psak in these matters were settled on his word. His teshuvot were mostly brief, the exception being one that grew to the size of a sefer, on the dividing of the kehillot of Salonica. Rav Yosef Karo, who almost never brings rabbanim of his own generation in the Beit Yosef, cites him there more than once and called him the light of Yisrael and its holy one; the Chida wrote that he was fit to have composed the Shulchan Aruch himself.

Rav Shlomo Molcho stayed in his beit midrash in 5289/1529, and the Chida writes that a maggid revealed itself to him. Rav Eliyahu de Vidas testified that for forty years he slept in a made bed only from Shabbat to Shabbat, lying otherwise on a chest with his feet on the ground and rising at exact chatzot — which no one knew until his wife told of it after he was niftar. Of his teshuvot only a portion survives, gathered in Sheerit Yehudah by his brother’s grandson. His Porat Yosef on Kohelet was printed in Venice in 5359/1599 and Lechem Setarim on Daniel and the five megillot there in 5368/1608; his kabbalistic commentary on Tehillim, Kaf HaKetoret, has been brought out anew in our own day. He moved to Constantinople in his old age and was niftar there.