Ordination in Tzfat

The chain of semikhah — rabbinic ordination passed from teacher to student since Moses laid his hands on Joshua — had been broken for well over a thousand years. Without it there could be no Sanhedrin, the great court of seventy-one. And without a Sanhedrin, some sages taught, the full redemption could not unfold.

In 1538 Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, the leading sage of Tzfat, set out to mend the chain. He relied on a ruling of Maimonides: that if all the sages of the Land of Israel agreed to ordain one of their number, the ordination would be renewed. The sages of Tzfat gathered and ordained Beirav, and he in turn ordained four scholars — among them Rabbi Yosef Karo. It was a time of intense longing for redemption; many expected it to come around the Hebrew year 5300 (1540).

In Jerusalem, Rabbi Levi ibn Chaviv (the Ralbach) objected that the sages of Jerusalem had not been asked, and that the renewal was invalid. A sharp exchange of treatises followed. Beirav, facing danger, left the Land; the controversy remained unresolved.

Karo did not let the chain drop. After Beirav’s death he ordained his own disciple, Rabbi Moshe Alsheich; and the Alsheich, in 1590, ordained Rabbi Chaim Vital. After that the line falls silent. For two generations, though, in the study halls of Tzfat, the ancient ordination lived again — and Maran’s beit midrash was one of its homes.