Mark Washofsky
R. Yosef Karo and R. Moshe Isserles, the two preeminent halakhic authorities of the sixteenth century, illustrate this tendency quite well. Their stories, recounting the motivations and methodologies which produced the Shulhan Arukh, are familiar ones. They deserve retelling, however, as a means of emphasizing the fact that Jewish law is not as“precedent-free” as the conventional wisdom would have us believe and that the reliance upon precedent as an indicator of correct legal decision is a practice of great antiquity in the history of the halakhah.
R. Yosef b. Efraim Karo (1488-1575) is most widely known as the author of the Shulhan Arukh, which remains the standard “code” of Jewish law to this day. His magnum opus, however, is his massive compendium entitled Beit Yosef, cast as a commentary upon the Arba’ah Turim of R. Ya'akov b. Asher. The Shulhan Arukh, indeed, is the essence of the halakhic product of the Beit Yosef, the summa of its conclusions,“a bouquet of its choicest blossoms.”?* He wrote the Beit Yosef, as he tells us in the book's Introduction, to help bring order out of the halakhic chaos in which the Jewish people finds itself due to the many persecutions and dispersions that have befallen it. The prophecy of Isaiah 29:14—"the wisdom of(the people’s) sages is no more”—has been fulfilled, and“the energy of the Torah and its students has been spent.” The problem, ironically enough, is not that the vicissitudes of history have prevented us from studying the Torah —a theme that dominates the Introduction to the Code of Maimoindes—but that, if anything, we have studied it too well. The Torah “has become not two torot but numberless torot, on account of the many books that have come into being for the purpose of explaining its laws.” No great devotee of halakhic pluralism, Karo reminds the reader that the goal of every good halakhist is to arrive at the right answer to every legal question. The best way to do this, of course, is to study each issue in light of its sources in the Talmud , the commentaries, and the literature of the poskim. Yet working one’s way through the massive halakhic literature is a daunting task, especially when it is difficult in the first place even to locate the appropriate Talmudic passages with which to begin the analysis. Accordingly, Karo will collect in one literary compendium all the information necessary to halakhic decision.” His work will recite? the Talmudic source passages for every law, the applicable commentaries to those passage by Rashi , the Tosafot and the rishonim, and the discussions of the