Samuel ben Moses Kalai (Qalʿī; variant: le-vet Qalʿī) was a halakhic authority in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. His surname alludes to his family’s origin in Calatayud in Spain. Kalai was born and raised in Corfu, where he studied under David ha-Kohen, an important Romaniot halakhic authority. He later settled in the Greek town of Arta (southern Epirus), where he married the daughter of Rabbi Benjamin ben Mattityahu. From 1525 on, Kalai was deeply involved in defending his father-in-law in a bitter, prolonged, and widespread controversy in which …