I recently was lucky enough to acquire a first edition of the Shulchan Aruch (published in 1565). R. Yosef Karo, its author, was born in 1488 in Toledo, Spain; forced to leave Spain in 1492; and then forced to leave neighboring Portugal in 1497.
For the next few decades, he lived in Morocco, Adrianople, Salonica, and Istanbul, finally settling in the Tzefat region of Eretz Yisrael in 1555 where he resided until his passing in 1575.
Interestingly, R. Yosef Karo in his own responsa never references the Shulchan Aruch, quoting instead from his Beit Yosef. In the introduction to the Shulchan Aruch, he writes that it was intended chiefly for young students, and he didn’t seem to have anticipated its amazing success.
Printing was very expensive in the 16th century, and books were therefore rarely republished during their authors’ lifetime. Within a decade of the Shulchan Aruch’s publication, though, several additional editions were published. The sefarim of no other living author during this period were reprinted as often as those of R. Yosef Karo.
By 1570, the Shulchan Aruch was published in Cracow with the additions the Rema. It is unknown if R. Yosef Karo was able to see the Rema’s additions before his passing, but they may have been the greatest factor in the Shulchan Aruch‘s acceptance throughout the Jewish world.
Interestingly, while codifying and summarizing halachot for easy reference seems natural today, it was met with fierce criticism from some of the greatest gedolim centuries ago. They feared that easy access to halacha would lead to neglect of the original sources of the halachot in the Gemara and mefarshim.
The Maharal in Netivot Olam writes: “To decide halachic questions from the codes without knowing the source of the ruling was not the intent of these authors. Had they known that their works would lead to the abandonment of Talmud, they would not have written them.”
The Maharsha on Masechet Sotah writes, “In these generations, those who rule from the Shulchan Aruch without knowing the reasoning and Talmudic basis…are among the ‘destroyers of the world’ and should be protested.”
Others who wrote against using the Shulchan Aruch include the Maharashal, the Bach, and the Mahari Ben Lev, who forbade his students from using it. R. Yosef Karo anticipated this criticism, though, and writes in the introduction to the work that despite the risks, he penned the work because it is very hard for an average person to arrive at the halacha on his own.
Within a century of the publication of the Shulach Aruch, nearly all criticism of it had subsided, partly because of the numerous published commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch, which include the sources and reasoning for the halachot.
