Episode Details

Journey to 16th-century Krakow, Poland, to meet the intellectual counterweight to Yosef Karo: Rabbi Moses Isserles, known by the acronym Rema. When Karo's Shulchan Arukh threatened to codify Jewish law solely according to Sephardic custom, the Rema authored his essential gloss, the Mappah (The Tablecloth), seamlessly weaving in the distinct customs and practices of Ashkenazi Jewry. Discover how this single, indispensable work—which often adds the crucial phrase "The custom is to..." to Karo's rulings—transformed the Shulchan Arukh from a regional code into the definitive, universal standard for global Orthodox practice, ensuring that the unique heritage of European Jewry was preserved and codified for all generations that followed.