LATTES, JUDAH

LATTES, JUDAH (13^th century), Provençal scholar. On his father's side he belonged to one of the most important families of Carcassonne, and his mother was the daughter of *Meshullam b. Moses of Béziers. His father Jacob was a famous scholar and is identified by some with Jacob b. Elijah, the author of Iggeret ha-Vikku'aḥ (Kobak's Jeschurun, 6 (1868), 1–34). Lattes was educated in Béziers, where he may have been born. His fame rests mainly upon his Ba'alei Asufot, a compilation of halakhic decisions, which is extant only in manuscript form. (The Sefer ha-Asufot published by A. Dzubas (1940) is a different work by an anonymous German scholar and was given its present title by Samuel David *Luzzatto. The entire structure erected by Dzubas in his introduction is therefore without foundation.) Lattes' compilation draws mainly on Provençal sources, such as *Abraham b. David of Posquières, R. Meshullam, his teacher, Gershon b. Solomon, and *Solomon b. Abraham of Montpellier whom he terms "my teacher." Comprising decisions dealing with the laws of holidays, mourning, forbidden foods, and wine, the work is actually a legal anthology arranged according to subject. Several decisions are provided under each heading, but it contains little original material. According to the testimony of his grandson Isaac Lattes in his own Sha'arei Ẓiyyon (ed. by S. Buber, 1881), Judah also wrote other works. He may be the author of Kelalei Kankannim, printed at the end of the Sefer Hashlamah to tractate Avodah Zarah (1917).

bibliography:

M. Mortara, Notizie di Alcune Collezioni di Consulti Manoscritti (1882); Y. Mann, in: Alim le-Bibliografyah u-le-Korot Yisrael, 1 (1935), 75–77; Z. Schwartz, ibid., 37–38, 77; B. Benedikt, in: KS, 2 (1950/51), 239ff.; idem, in: Sinai, 27 (1950), 322–9.

[Israel Moses Ta-Shma]