Isaiah di Trani

Isaiah di Trani ben Mali (the Elder) (c. 1180 – c. 1250) , better known as the RID, was a prominent Italian Talmudist.

Biography Isaiah originated in Trani, an ancient settlement of Jewish scholarship, and likely lived in Venice. He carried on a correspondence with Simhah of Speyer and with Simḥah's two pupils, Isaac ben Moses of Vienna and Abigdor Cohen of Vienna. Isaiah himself probably lived for some time in the Orient. He left a learned son, David, and a daughter, with whose son, Isaiah ben Elijah di Trani, he has often been confounded. and Zedekiah ben Abraham, author of Shibbolei haLeket and a pupil of Isaiah, composed glosses on it in 1297. As regards other Bible commentaries ascribed to him, see Isaiah di Trani the Younger. Isaiah also wrote an introduction (petiḥah) to a seliḥah beginning with איכה שפתי, which has been metrically translated into German by Zunz.

Isaiah's chief importance, however, rests upon the fact that he was the most prominent representative of Talmudic scholarship in Italy. He wrote commentaries on almost the whole Talmud, in the form of tosafot, ḥiddushim (novellae), or pesakim (decisions). Of his tosafot the following have been printed: those to Kiddushin, in the Sabbionetta (1553) edition of that treatise; on Ta'anit and Kiddushin, in Eleazar ben Aryeh Löw's Einei haEdah (Prague, 1809); on Baba Batra, Baba Kamma, Baba Metzia, Avodah Zarah, Hagigah, Shabbat, Niddah, Eruvin, Rosh haShanah, Yoma, Sukkah, Megillah, Mo'ed Katan, Pesahim, Bezah, Nedarim, and Nazir, in the two collections Tosafot R. Yeshayahu (Lemberg, 1861, 1869). Some extracts are also contained in Bezalel Ashkenazi's Shittah Mekubbetzet.

The author sometimes quotes the pesakim in his tosafot, from which it would seem that he composed the former earlier than the latter. As in many instances the pesakim appear to have been inserted in the tosafot by the copyists; they cannot always be distinguished. Of some of the tosafot Isaiah made two or more versions.