TimingMayNotbeEverything... ButitHelps: SomeHistoricalFactorsthat ContributedtotheSuccessofthe Shulhan Arukh EDWARD FRAM Contemporary Judaism has no central legislative body, such as the papacy, to determine what is right or wrong for the entire correct ritual behaviour for Jewish people. Even in talmudic times, when various centrestriedtoasserttheirauthority,thegeographicdispersaloftheJews among different empires and kingdoms, and the difficulty of long-dis- tancecommunicationandtravel,resultedindecentralizedpower.Butin the realm of legal authority this began to change in the second half of the mid-sixteenth century, when a composite piece of single legal codi- fication began to be established as the authority in much of the Jewish world. ItsacceptanceasthenormativeformulationofJewishlaw,or halakhah, didnotgounchallenged.Yetitprevailedtosuchanextentthatarabbinic court in Frankfurt in the second half of the eighteenth century could describe it to the non-Jewish authorities as the universally accepted code of Jewish law. 1 This work was Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulhan arukh (literally, ‘set table’), which first appeared in 1565 in Venice. Although the title page is dated 1564, but printing only began in that year and, like all printing in the age of movable type, it took some time months to complete. The work volume became available in 1565. Caro’sworkwascharacterizedbyatopicalorganizationofthevarious rulesapplicabletocontemporaryJewishlifeintheDiasporaandtheLand of Israel. It included laws such as those of the Sabbath, kashrut and tithes,butnotthoseofsacrifice,theTempleandJewishkingship.Caro’s 101 1 YIVO MS RG 128 (E 078) fol. 90a.