SHE’ELOT TESHUVOT (RESPONSA), RABBI ASHER BEN JEHIEL, CONSTANTINOPLE: [SAMUEL BEN DAVID AND MOSES BEN SAMUEL IBN NAHMIAS], 1517

The first edition of a fundamental responsa collection.

Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel (Rosh; ca. 1250-1327) was the leading disciple of the outstanding German scholar Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (ca. 1215-1293). After the latter’s imprisonment, Rosh became the acknowledged leader of German Jewry and headed the unsuccessful efforts to obtain his master’s release. Fearing a fate similar to that of his teacher, Rosh left Germany in 1303 and, after passing through northern Italy and Provence, reached Spain the following year. There he accepted the position of rabbi in Toledo and found himself drawn into the contemporary conflict concerning the study of philosophy. Sensitive to the danger of discord, he proposed an intercommunal conference to reconcile the opposing views.

Rosh’s greatest legacy was the introduction of French and German methodology into the discipline of Talmud study in Spain. He synthesized the positions of his teachers in Ashkenaz with Spanish tradition and custom. He was the acknowledged halakhic authority on both sides of the Pyrenees and students flocked to his yeshiva. A prolific author, he penned more than one thousand responsa as well as commentaries on numerous Talmudic tractates.

Rosh’s responsa are among the more important and influential of this genre. He was frequently called upon to interpret communal ordinances and their relationship to classical Jewish law, as well as to decide which local Spanish customs should be honored and which should be opposed.

A bridge between the great rabbinic centers of Germany and Spain, Rosh had a lasting impact on the development of halakhah. His son Rabbi Jacob (ca. 1270-1340) used his father’s legal oeuvre as the basis for his own magnum opus, Sefer arba‘ah turim (see lots 30, 112, 166), a code of operative Jewish law with a new structure independent of the Talmud and earlier codes, which in turn became the basis for Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulhan arukh (see lots 37, 114).