Moses ben Joseph di Trani ( he, משה מטראני) the Elder, known by his acronym Mabit ( Salonica, Rumelia Eyalet in Ottoman Greece 1500 – Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire 1580) was a 16th-century rabbi in

Safed Safed (known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as Tzfat; Sephardi Hebrew, Sephardic Hebrew & Modern Hebrew: צְפַת ''Tsfat'', Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation, Ashkenazi Hebrew: ''Tzfas'', Biblical Hebrew: ''Ṣǝp̄aṯ''; ar, صفد, ''Ṣafad''), i ...

. His father had fled to Salonica from

Apulia it, Pugliese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographic ...

three years prior to his birth. While still a boy Moses was sent to

Adrianople Edirne (, ), formerly known as Adrianople or Hadrianopolis (Greek: Άδριανούπολις), is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, ...

to pursue the study of the Talmud under the supervision of his uncle Aaron. At the age of sixteen he went to

and completed his studies under Jacob Berab. In 1525 he was appointed

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...

of Safed; he held this office for some fifty-five years, when he eventually moved to Jerusalem. According to a 16th-century Jewish traveler who visited Safed in 1567, Rabbi Moses di Trani was still living in Safed:

Works

Moses di Trani was the author of: * ''Bet Elohim'' (Venice, 1576), a moral and philosophical work on prayer, atonement, and the fundamental principles of faith * ''Kiryat Sefer'' (Venice, 1551), a commentary on the Bible, the ''Talmud'', and difficult passages in the commentaries of Maimonides * ''Sefer ha-Tehiyyah weha-Pedut'' (Mantua, 1556; Wilna, 1799; Sudzilkov, 1834; Warsaw, 1841), a commentary and notes on ch. vii and viii of Saadia Gaon's ''Emunot we-Deot'' * ''She'elot u-Teshubot'' (vol. i, ib. 1629; vol. ii, ib. 1630), a collection of 841 ''

responsa ''Responsa'' (plural of Latin , 'answer') comprise a body of written decisions and rulings given by legal scholars in response to questions addressed to them. In the modern era, the term is used to describe decisions and rulings made by scholars i ...

'', with an index

References

External links

Bet Elohim
(Venice, 1576) - free scanned version in DJVU format
She'elot uTeshuvot
(Lvov, 1861) - free scanned version in PDF format 1505 births 1585 deaths Rabbis from Thessaloniki 16th-century rabbis from the Ottoman Empire Rabbis in Ottoman Galilee Rabbis in Safed Burials at the Old Jewish Cemetery, Safed Authors of books on Jewish law {{Judaism-bio-stub