The Maharalbach

R. Levi ibn Chabib (Maharalbach, c. 1480-1545) was the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem during a pivotal transition era. Son of R. Yaakov ibn Chabib (compiler of Ein Yaakov), he was exiled from Spain in 1492 as a child, was forcibly converted in Portugal in 1497, escaped to Salonika, and finally made aliyah to Jerusalem in 1525.

He is most famous for his sharp opposition to R. Yaakov Berav's 1538 attempt to renew classical semicha in Tzfat — the so-called 'Semicha Controversy', which Levi argued (in his Kuntres HaSemicha) could not be unilaterally re-established without consensus of all the major rabbinic centers. His Teshuvot Maharalbach and his Talmudic novellae are foundational Sephardic-Erets Yisrael sources.