Curiel, Israel ben Meir di
CURIEL, ISRAEL BEN MEIR DI
CURIEL, ISRAEL BEN MEIR DI (d. 1577), sage of Safed. Neither the place nor the date of his birth is known. Similarly, there is no precise idea as to the date of his arrival in Safed. Di Curiel studied under R. Joseph Fasi in Adrianople, and presumably he held a rabbinic office in one of the congregations there. He evidently spent some time in Istanbul as well. In Safed, Di Curiel studied under Jacob *Berab and was one of the latter's ordainees. Together with Joseph *Caro and Moses *Trani, Di Curiel sat in the Safed bet din. Among his disciples was R. Bezalel *Ashkenazi. He was one of the outstanding preachers of his time. A corpus of Di Curiel's homilies was published by S. Regev in addition to his Or Ẓaddikim (Salonica 1799), which was mistakenly attibuted to R. Joseph *Caro. The poet R. Israel *Najara was his grandson.
bibliography:
M. Pachter, Kiryat Sefer, 55 (1980), 802–10; S. Regev, Rabbi Israel di Curiel, Sermons and Homilies (Heb., 1992), with biographical notes by M. Benayahu); A. David, To Come To the Land: Immigration and Settlement in 16th Century Eretz-Israel (1999), 151, 234.
[Abraham David]