text · B0102
Shulchan Aruch שלחן ערוך
The code of Jewish law: Karo's Sefardic rulings set as "a table prepared," spread with the Rema's Ashkenazic "tablecloth" — the fusion that let one printed page govern practice from Fez to Vilna. It is the chain's great demonstration that after expulsion and dispersal, unity was rebuilt out of TEXTS: its author drew his authority openly from the three pillars, not from a personal line.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- שלחן ערוך
- Also known as
- The Set Table
- Era
- acharonim
II. When
- Traditional
- completed 5323 AM; first printed 5325 (1565)
- Academic
- completed 1563 in Tzfat; printed Venice 1565; Rema's glosses from 1570
- Duration
- ≈7 years
- Precision
- exact
IV. What
- Language
- Hebrew
- Redaction
- Distilled by R' Yosef Karo (Yosef Karo) from his Beit Yosef on the Tur's structure; the glosses (HaMapah) of R' Moshe Isserles (The Rema) were interleaved within a decade, and the two circulate as one book.
- Structure
- Four divisions on the Tur's model — Orach Chaim, Yoreh De'ah, Even HaEzer, Choshen Mishpat — in short numbered paragraphs of bare ruling, with the Rema's Ashkenazic glosses printed inside the text.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Its opening paragraph — "strengthen yourself like a lion to rise in the morning for the service of your Creator" — carries the Tur's opening (itself citing Yehudah ben Teima) into the law's final form, with the Rema's first hagah alongside: the two traditions visibly sharing one page. | rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| Karo derived its rulings by the Beit Yosef's declared method — the majority of the Rif, Rambam, and Rosh — and printing spread it so fast that within a generation "the Shulchan Aruch with the Rema" was the default referent of "the halakha" itself. | tradition external | ★★★★☆ |