Abraham de Boton

Abraham Hiyya de Boton (c. 1560 – c. 1605) (Hebrew: אברהם די בוטון) was a Talmudist and rabbi, a pupil of Samuel de Medina, who later dwelt for the most part at Salonica as rabbi and leader of a Talmudic academy. The name "Ḥiyya" was given him during a dangerous sickness (Ḥiyya = "life"; "may he live!"). He was for a time rabbi at Polia; in 1601 he lived in the Old Yishuv, and in 1603 was at Constantinople. that his teacher Mordecai Kalai told him and other pupils that the Leḥem Mishneh was the joint work of Kalai and Boton, who were fellow-students; and Kalai is even reported to have said that most of the observations in Leḥem Mishneh were his own. This aspersion loses force through the fact that though Kalai lived in the same city, he never made this claim against Boton publicly.

Another work of Boton's was Leḥem Rav (Great Meal, or Great Dispute), responsa, published by his grandson Abraham (No. 4), Smyrna, 1660. The novellae on Baba Ḳamma in Abraham Akra's (Abraham ibn Akra) Meharere Nemerim must be the work of another and earlier Abraham de Boton.