Years: 1488–1575
Primary city: Safed
Rabbi Yosef Karo spent twenty years authoring the Beis Yosef, an encyclopedic synthesis of rabbinic discourse, which he began in Turkey and the Balkans and continued to refine for another twelve years in Tzfat. This labor culminated in his condensation of the work into the Shulchan Aruch, a code of halacha that unified the legal traditions of his time into a single authority.