new certainties and new mysticism 381
in pocket format ‘so that it could be carried in one’s bosom so that it may
be referred to at any time and any place, while resting or travelling’.^3
The immediate reputation gained by the Shulhan Arukh can be
gauged from the reaction to its publication by Moses Isserles, a leading
Ashkenazi rabbinic authority in Cracow, hundreds of miles from both
Safed and Venice. Isserles, known as the Rama, was a scholar from a
wealthy family already widely known outside Poland in his mid-
twenties. He was engaged on a commentary of his own on the Arba’ah
Turim of Yaakov b. Asher when he discovered that Karo was complet-
ing his commentary in the Beth Yosef. So Isserles decided instead to
compile, in his Darkhei Moshe (‘Ways of Moses’), supplementary notes
from Ashkenazi scholars to add to Karo’s work. When the Shulhan
Arukh was published, Isserles used the material in Darkhei Moshe for
his Mappah, with glosses to Karo’s compilation intended to explain and
supplement the text and, in particular, to include the customs of those
Ashkenazi scholars ignored by Karo. Such glosses could sometimes sub-
vert the whole burden of Karo’s original ruling in particular cases, as in
the prohibition against resorting to use of non- Jewish courts:
Even if the plaintiff possesses a document in which it is written that he
may summon the defendant under gentile law – he is still not permitted to
summon him before the gentile courts. If the plaintiff handed over the
document to the gentile court so that it might summon the defendant
under its laws, he is obligated to reimburse the defendant for any loss he
caused him, in excess of whatever the defendant is liable to pay under the
laws of Israel. Gloss: This whole ruling applies only where one party can
compel the other to appear before a Jewish court, but if a debtor proves
violent, a creditor may hand over such a document to a gentile court.Isserles’ procedure was helped by the fact that Karo had explicitly laid
down in the Beth Yosef that if his decision disagreed with Jewish custom
in any country, Jews in that country were free to disregard his ruling.
The two men were friends, engaging in correspondence on matters of
halakhah, with Isserles, a much younger man, scrupulously courteous.
The Mappah was included in the 1569– 71 edition of the Shulhan Arukh
published in Cracow, only a few years after the first edition of Karo’s
work in 1564– 5 in Venice.^4
It should not be imagined that the extraordinary popularity of the
codifications of Karo and Isserles brought an end to halakhic variety.
The whole procedure of codification was strongly attacked in their life-
times by Hayyim b. Betsalel, who had studied alongside Isserles but