Maran Yosef Karo - (Also known as the Shulchan Aruch) is the most prominent of the men of spirit and action in the golden age of Safed, the Renaissance that flourished in the tiny Galilean city in the sixteenth century, a generation after the expulsion from Spain and the destruction of Portugal. Yosef Karo (1575-1488) immigrated to Safed in the year 1536/1535, following a mystical revelation on the eve of Shavuot in the year 1536 or 1566, in which he heard the voice of the exiled Shekinah calling him to come to the Land of Israel and take Part of her redemption. His desire to ascend the stake, like Solomon before him, and to sanctify the name of heaven in the Holy Land was another motive. In the years after his ascension, he presided over a large yeshiva in Safed, had many mystical revelations, which he recorded in 'Magid Mishrim', completed 'Beit Yosef', his great work of halakhi which was printed in the 1650s, compiled 'Shalchan Aruch' and brought it to print In the 1960s, he added and compiled a long series of interpretations, innovations and books of halacha, and fought for his position as the head and foremost of the sages of the Land of Israel. In our time, the most well-known annotations to the Shulchan Aruch are Rabbi Hafetz Chaim's Mishnah Berura and Rabbi Yechiel Michal Epstein's Aruch HaShulchan.
Caro, one of the greatest halachic judges of his generation and the generations after him, was known in the yeshivas world as 'Beit Yosef', after his monumental book of halakhic. He is popularly known as the owner of the Shulchan Aruch, which together with the Hamapah - המפה - Tablecloth - laws according to Ashkenazi custom added by Rama (Rabbi Moshe Iserlish) - shaped the halachic world of Judaism and became synonymous with Halacha itself. This book of rulings gained the status of a legislative institution I am sovereign both because of the system of ruling, which bases the decision of the Halacha on the opinion of the majority in the heavenly Sanhedrin that was revealed to the author in his mystical visions, and because of the reputation he gained as the one who was awarded the gift of prophecy in the Land of Israel. Such a combination did not exist until Caro's time nor after him, and it was he who gave him the The title 'Maran' (our Lord).
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