Joseph Chayyim ben Isaac Selig Caro

Who was Joseph Chayyim ben Isaac Selig Caro?

Joseph Chayyim ben Isaac Selig Caro was a German-Russian rabbi. He was educated as an Orthodox Talmudist, and married the daughter of Rabbi Tzebi Hirsch Amsterdam of Konin, government of Kalisz in Russian Poland, whose pupil he became. He afterward established himself as a merchant in Gnesen, near Posen, whence, at about the age of forty, he was called to the rabbinate of Pinne, in the province of Posen. Later he became rabbi of Fordon, in the same province, and twenty years after his first call he became rabbi of the progressive and Germanized community of Wloclawek, where he remained until his death. He was one of the first truly Orthodox rabbis in Russia to acquire a correct knowledge of German and to deliver sermons in that language.

Caro was famous not only for his extensive rabbinical knowledge, but also as a preacher. His works remained popular among old-style maggidim and darshanim. His first work, Minchat Shabbat, is a German translation of Pirqe Abot, with a short commentary in German and a longer one in Hebrew. In the third edition of that work the German commentary is omitted and that of Maimonides is substituted for it. Caro's Teba we-Haken, containing rules of shechita and bedikah in the form of a dialogue, was published by his sons Isaac and Jacob. His chief work, Qol Omer Qera, is a collection of sermons in four volumes, arranged after the order of the Pentateuch in the weekly sections, which furnished the texts.