The book Derash Moshe – Venice 1603 including the eulogy for the author of the Shulchan Aruch Rabbi Yosef ...

The book Derash Moshe – Venice 1603 including the eulogy for the author of the Shulchan Aruch Rabbi Yosef Karo

The book Derash Moshe “Every month, according to the time and its deeper meaning…homilies on festivals and years…” by Rabbi Moshe Alvalida. His homily on the portion of Balak [page 103] contains his eulogy for Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch “About the news about the death of Rabbi Yosef Karo in the city of Sefad on 13 Tammuz.”

In the eulogy he writes: “We should be greatly shocked by the death of this great rabbi who sustained us with his great book the Beit Yosef…this great complete person who was our leader and our light…and he should be mourned…and I mourn for the city of Safed…for with the death of this great person great darkness has fallen upon them.”

Juan di Gara printing press, Venice, 1603. [6], 128 [should be 125] leaves.

Rabbi Moshe Alvalida was a rabbi and philosopher in Spain who was exiled to Salonika with his father in the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. In 1534, while serving as rabbi of Barata [a Greek island], he signed a decree forbidding mixed dancing and after the decree was not followed, he left his position and moved to Avlona. There too he was not rabbi for a long time, and due to the dispute, he moved to Salonika, where he died.