Todros Ben Isaac

Talmudist; lived in Italy or in southern France in the latter part of the thirteenth century and the early part of the fourteenth. He was the author of novellæ on the Talmud treatise Nazir, which are still extant in manuscript (Neubauer, "Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS." No. 447). Todros concludes his work by saying that he composed it in 1322, a year in which the Jews were undergoing many persecutions. After the massacre of the lepers (see Jew. Encyc. v. 462 et seq.), followed by the outbreak of the Pastoureaux, the Talmud was burned, and the Roman emperor projected still other persecutions. According to Grätz, this Roman emperor was Frederick, the rival of Louis of Bavaria and an enemy of the Jews; and he also advances the theory that an allusion to the persecution mentioned by Todros is contained in an elegy which a certain Joab wrote on the burning of the Talmud and which is found in an Oxford manuscript (Neubauer, "Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS." No. 1061; comp. idem in "Monatsschrift," 1872, p. 376).

Bibliography:

  * Grätz, in Monatsschrift, 1886, p. 8;
  * idem, in J. Q. R. ii. 104.



E. C. I. Br.