born 1488, Spain
died March 24, 1575, Safed, Palestine
Spanish-born Jewish scholar.
When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, he and his parents settled in Turkey. Around 1536 he emigrated to Safed in Palestine, where he studied the Talmud and systematized the vast body of material produced by post-Talmudic writers. He was the author of the last great codification of Jewish law, the House of Joseph , which was later condensed as The Well-Laid Table and is still authoritative for Orthodox Judaism .