Meir de Boton

Among the first generation of Portuguese Jewish exiles to settle in Salonika, Meir ben Moses de Boton was active in that city as a public figure, scholar, and author of elaborate Hebrew liturgical poetry, for which his adopted city was an important center. De Boton exchanged his compositions with like-minded rabbis and patrons of the genre. He was the brother of the better-known R. Abraham Ḥiyya ben Moses de Boton, and uncle of Abraham’s son, Meir ben Abraham de Boton, a leading figure of the following generation of Salonika’s Jewish community, whose responsa were published posthumously in Smyrna (1660).