ר׳ יום טוב בן משה צהלון

ר׳ יום טוב בן משה צהלון (1559–1620), known as מהריט״ץ, was a distinguished Safed halakhist of the generation after ר׳ יוסף קארו. His family was of Spanish origin, although neither his birthplace nor the date of its migration is known. In Safed he studied under ר׳ משה מטראני and ר׳ משה אלשיך, from whom he received semikhah. Already at twenty-five, ר׳ שמואל יפה of Constantinople asked him to decide a difficult legal problem, evidence of his early standing. His responsa address ritual, commercial, family and communal disputes throughout the Ottoman world. He corresponded and disagreed with leading contemporaries, notably ר׳ משה גלאנטי. In a Jerusalem dispute between Sephardi and Ashkenazi congregations he ruled for the Ashkenazim, and he did not hesitate to question individual rulings of ר׳ יוסף קארו. He travelled on communal business to Egypt and Constantinople, but Safed remained the centre of his scholarly identity. His works include לקח טוב on Esther, מגן אבות on Avot, talmudic novellae and a large responsa corpus. Encyclopaedia Judaica dates his death to 1619/20; the later 1638 date is not used here.