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Jewish History.org presents Rabbi Berel Wein's 5,000 years of Jewish history, one video clip at a time. Clip number 40: The Code of Jewish Law.
Rabbi Yosef Caro, who was one of those who received the ordination for the Sanhedrin, settled in Safed in the north of Israel. He was a tremendous scholar of note. He had written an encyclopedic commentary to the works of Maimonides. He was a person of great piety and great stature. When the Sanhedrin failed, he, so to speak, created a substitute for the Sanhedrin. The substitute for the Sanhedrin was a book. This book encompassed all of Jewish law in a practical, step-by-step, sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph set of instructions. This became the Shulchan Aruch, the set table, in which all of Jewish law after Maimonides was supposed to be settled.
However, he used as his work three basic books: the book of Maimonides, the book of Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, and the book of Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel and his son Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, called the Tur. Now, the Tur was an Ashkenazic work. The other two works were Sefardic works. Because of that, he said if there's a disagreement, he'll follow the majority. Well, the majority was Sefardic, and therefore the book would have been unacceptable to the Ashkenazic world because it did not reflect their customs and their decisions.
The book was saved by a Jew in Krakow, Poland, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, called the Rema. He wrote a book called the Mappah, the tablecloth on top of the set table of Rabbi Yosef Caro. Instead of publishing it as a separate book, he interlined it in the sentences and in the paragraphs of Rabbi Yosef Caro, reflecting the opinions, the decisions, and the customs of Ashkenazic Jewry. From that time on, from 1550 to 1560 on, the book has always been published with the commentaries of the Rema interlined with the original text of Yosef Caro. So it became a whole book, which is used and usable by all of the Jewish people, Ashkenazic and Sefardic, and remains until today the basic book of Jewish law, of Jewish instruction, of Jewish rabbinic decision.
Thanks for watching. I'm Berel Wein. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistory.org.