Judah Rosanes

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Judah ben Samuel Rosanes (1657-1727) was Rabbi of Constantinople and son-in-law of Abraham Rosanes I. His teachers in Talmud and rabbinics were Samuel ha-Levi and Joseph di Trani. On account of his knowledge of Arabic and Turkish he was appointed by the government as chief rabbi ("hakam bashi") of the Ottoman empire. He died at an advanced age in Constantinople on April 13, 1727;

Judah took a very active part in condemning and denouncing the Shabbethaians, and he was one of the signers of an appeal to the German communities to oppose the movement (comp. Jacob Emden, Torat ha-Ḳena'ot, Lemberg, 1870). He wrote:

• Parashat Derakim (Constantinople, 1727), a work containing twenty-six homiletic treatises on various subjects.
• A pamphlet entitled Derek Miẓwoteka, a treatise on the 613 commandments, based on the treatises on the same subject by Maimonides and others.
• Mishneh la-Melek (ib. 1731), glosses and comments on Maimonides' Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah; later it was printed together with the Yad (Jessnitz, 1739-1740).

This work and others were edited & published by his devoted pupil Rabbi Yaakov Culi.

Several works bear approbations ("haskamot") by Judah Rosanes, among others Joseph Almosnino's Edut bi-Yehosef.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.