The Source That Would Not Come

When the Beit Yosef appeared, not everyone welcomed it. One of the leading halachic authorities of the time, Rabbi Yosef ibn Lev of Istanbul, told his students not to use it. A book that laid out every source and every opinion, he feared, would make them lazy: they would rely on it, and lose their own mastery of the Talmud and the early authorities.

Rabbi ibn Lev was himself the model of what he demanded. When he taught the Tur, the Chida relates, he would cite from memory every source on which each ruling rested — and he never forgot one.

Then one day, in the middle of a lesson, he could not remember the source of a particular ruling. He searched his memory; he searched the books; it would not come. At last he said to his students: “I see that Heaven wants the Beit Yosef to be studied. Go and look it up there.”

They opened the Beit Yosef, and there was the source, in a tractate of the Talmud. From that day on, Rabbi Yosef ibn Lev allowed his students to learn from it.