Tsaddik Formon

Very little is known about rabbi and translator Tsaddik ben Joseph Formon, who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. His father, a prominent rabbi and halakhic decisor, served as rabbi of the Greek islands of Syros (where he seemingly raised his children), Zante (Zakynthos), and later one of the communities in the Greek city of Patras. Tsaddik’s name is mentioned in one responsum, which notes that he too served as a rabbi in Patras. Tsaddik composed a Ladino version of Ḥovot ha-levavot (Duties of the Heart), a Judeo-Arabic ethical and moral work by eleventh-century Baḥya Ibn Pakuda via Judah Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation. Formon’s work, Obligacion de los coraçones, was first printed in Salonika around 1568. Another edition was printed in Amsterdam in 1610 by David Pardo, who transcribed it into Roman characters (leading some to mistakenly attribute the work to him), and it was reprinted in Venice in 1713, again in Hebrew characters.