Shu"t Rosh Yosef
Full text not yet available in our corpus.
R
Yosef Escapa
Yosef Escapa
1572 CE–1662 CE · Acharonim · Uskup
Rabbi Yosef Escapa (c. 1572–1662) was a Sephardic halachic authority whose surname recalls Skopje (Üsküb), the Ottoman town where he is thought to have been born. He first served as rabbi and head of a yeshiva in Salonika (Thessaloniki) before settling in Izmir (Smyrna), where he at first shared the rabbinate with a colleague and, from 1648, led the city's united congregations until his death. Escapa gave the growing community much of its structure, issuing ordinances on taxation and communal oversight that guided Izmir's Jewish life for generations. His scholarship centered on the Arba'ah Turim of Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher: his Rosh Yosef gathers commentary and novellae on that code, while his legal rulings were later collected as the responsa volume Shu"t Rosh Yosef. He is also remembered as an early teacher of the young Shabbetai Tzvi, whom he afterward placed under a ban.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the orchard map →
✦
In the same place & time
✦
Sages whose lives overlapped with Yosef Escapa’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Maharashdam, Yitzchak Adarbi, Moshe Almosnino, Maharchash, Abraham de Boton, Knesset HaGedolah, Shabbetai Tzvi
The world in their lifetime
✦
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yosef Escapa’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.