ר׳ יעקב בן שלמה אבן חביב

ר׳ יעקב בן שלמה אבן חביב (c. 1460–1516), author of עין יעקב, was a Spanish Talmudist and a principal leader of the Sephardi exiles in Ottoman Salonica. Born at Zamora, he studied under ר׳ שמואל ואלנסי and became associated with a major yeshiva at Salamanca. Expelled from Spain in 1492, he passed through Portugal and eventually settled in Salonica, where the Benveniste family’s extensive libraries enabled his literary work. He helped organize the large and internally diverse exile community, sought to preserve Castilian traditions and participated in communal ordinances and halakhic decisions. עין יעקב gathers the aggadic passages of the Babylonian Talmud, selected Jerusalem Talmud material and major medieval commentaries, adding his own explanations. Its accessible focus on ethics, theology and narrative made Talmudic teaching available far beyond advanced yeshiva circles. He personally supervised the first Salonica printing in 1516 but died after the orders Zeraim and Moed appeared; his son ר׳ לוי בן חביב completed the remaining sections. The work became one of the most frequently printed rabbinic anthologies.