Yosef Babad

Rabbi Yosef Babad (1801–1874) was a Galician halakhic authority and Talmudist. Born in Przeworsk, he studied under Rabbi Chaim Halberstam, founder of the Sanz Hasidic dynasty, whose sister he later married. Babad held rabbinic posts in several Galician towns—Bohorodczany, Zbarazh, and Sniatyn—before being appointed head of the rabbinical court in Tarnopol in 1857, a post he retained until his death there in 1874. He is best known for the Minchat Chinuch, first published anonymously in Lemberg in 1869. Organized around the sequence of the Sefer HaChinuch, it takes up the 613 commandments in turn and is noted for clarifying underlying legal principles by testing them against unusual, carefully constructed cases. He also composed Mishpat Shalom, a commentary on the Choshen Mishpat section of Jewish civil law.