Background
He belonged to a family of distinguished scholars in Spain; it is uncertain whether he was bom before or after his family left Spain and went to Portugal, from where they soon moved to Turkey.
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Yosef Caro or Qaro
He belonged to a family of distinguished scholars in Spain; it is uncertain whether he was bom before or after his family left Spain and went to Portugal, from where they soon moved to Turkey.
His father died when he was young and his main teacher was his uncle, Isaac Caro. Many Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s settled in the Ottoman Empire, which became a leading center of Jewish learning.
Caro himself lived in Turkey for forty years, in Salonika, and mostly in Adrianople and Nikopol. He was a leading figure in both rabbinical academies and in kabbalistic circles. In 1536 Caro moved to Safed in the Holy Land where he became head of the local rabbinical court and of an important academy. Safed at the time was an outstanding center of Jewish learning and mysticism and one of Caro’s students and colleagues was the kabbalist Moses Cordovero.
While living in Nikopol, Caro began work on his monumental codification of Jewish law, "Bet Yoseph" (“House of Joseph”), which he completed two decades later when he was in Safed. This is a massive comprehensive work following the four-part division of Jewish law that had been adopted in the Turim of Jacob ben Asher. Over the previous centuries numerous attempts had been made to codify Jewish law and the profusion of authorities had become bewildering.
While "Bet Yoseph" was widely studied, even more influential was the "Shulhan Arukh" (“The Table Is Prepared”), Caro’s own digest of "Bet Yoseph", originally prepared for young students. This became the recognized guide to Jewish religious practice and the most popular book of Jewish law ever produced, opening rabbinic law not only to the scholar but to the average Jew. At first, its appeal was limited because it restricted itself to Sephardi custom and practice but with the supplement of the Mappah of Moses Isserles', adding Ashkenazi aspects, the "Shulhan Arukh" became and has remained the standard code for the entire Jewish world.
Caro therefore sought to lay down one code that would be universally acceptable and would establish religious norms in Judaism. He compared the great codes of Isaac Alfasi, Moses Maimonides, and Asher ben Yehiel and, in the event of a disagreement among the three, he accepted the majority view. He also collected and studied the writings of many rabbinic authorities, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, tracing each law from its Talmudic source throughout rabbinic discussion down the ages and deriving what he saw to be the authoritative decision.
Caro was already in his lifetime recognized as an outstanding kabbalist, especially in Sephardi circles. He believed that he was visited each night by a supernatural spirit who revealed to him divine mysteries and instructions on ascetic conduct as well as inspiring his everyday life and his studies. Caro called this manifestation his maggid(literally, narrator), whom he defined as the personification of the Mishnah. Communication was through automatic writing contained in his mystical diary published as "Maggid Mesharim" (“Narrator of Righteousness”).
