Shailoth Uteshuvoth MeHaR”I ibn Lev [responsa] Part I. (Parts II-IV were printed in 1561-98)

There is some confusion among bibliographers concerning the place and date of publication of this volume. Conventional wisdom placed its printing to Constantinople in 1561, where the remaining parts of this multi-volumed responsa were published. However, Yudlov in his catalogue of the Mehlman Collection suggests that the first part was in fact published in Salonika in 1558. As proof for this assertion, he points out in Genuzoth Sepharim, p.106, no. 162 that the author himself makes reference to this in the second part of this collection. On this issue, see also the discussion by Hacker in Areshet vol. V, p. 485, no. 162. The author dedicated this work to the illustrious Dona Gracia Nasi, whose printing-press in her Palace at Belvedere outside Constantinople, kept Hebrew literary endeavors alive in the Ottoman Empire at the time. Indeed the printer of the present work states here his intention to undertake the printing of a new edition of the Talmud following the recent calamitous public-burning of the Talmud in Italy The author was one of the greatest scholars of his generation. The Chida in his Shem Ha-Gedolim states that three scholars of that generation (all coincidentally named Yoseph) were capable of penning a work of the magnitude of the Beith Yoseph: R. Yoseph Karo, R. Yoseph ibn Lev and R.Yoseph Taitatzak. Incidentally, a wondrous story is told concerning his recurring appearance in a dream in the 19th century to the Lithuanian ”Wonder- Rabbi,” R. Mordechai Oshminer, author of Hadrath Mordecai. A vision came to R. Mordecai that he was to undertake a penance on behalf of an ancestor who had humiliated Yoseph Ibn Lev centuries earlier in Salonica. His descendant was to purchase a copy of the respons from his colleague R. Pinchas of Antipole and intensely study its content s daily for four years until he had memorized them thoroughly . The proceeds of the sale of the volume would enable R. Pinchas to publish his own work on the Talmud containing a commentary in places where Rashi had not commented