The responsa produced by the Encaoua reveal a coherent decision-making method and a particular sensitivity to social questions.
The decision-making method of the Encaoua is characterized by three distinctive traits. First, a great attentiveness to real-life situations: rather than mechanically applying the codes, the Encaoua dayanim strove to understand the concrete reality of each litigant. Second, a constant recourse to Talmudic precedents, but interpreted with the sensibility proper to Maghrebi Judaism, more flexible and pragmatic than the Ashkenazi tradition. Third, a generous stance toward the reintegration of the conversos into the Jewish communities — a crucial question after 1391 and 1492, when thousands of forcibly converted Jews sought to return to Judaism. This humanistic approach to rabbinic justice explains why the Encaoua were respected not only by the Jews, but also by the Muslim authorities, who recognized in them fair judges mindful of the common good.
The Encaoua showed themselves favorable to the reintegration of the anusim (forcibly converted Jews), adopting a generous position inspired by the Rivash (Rabbi Isaac Bar Sheshet Perfet) and the Rashbash (Rabbi Shimon ben Tsemah Duran), the two great decisors who had accompanied Éphraïm Al-Naqua in his exile to the Maghreb in 1391. This question — does a Jew forcibly converted to Christianity retain his Jewish status? — was one of the most debated in the post-1391 halakha. The Encaoua, faithful to the Castilian tradition, held that forced conversion was null and that the conversos should be welcomed as brothers returning to the fold. This position contributed to making the Maghreb a land of refuge and reintegration for thousands of crypto-Jews coming from Spain and Portugal.
A commentary on the Pentateuch attributed to a Rav Shlomo Encaoua of the 16th century, a fragmentary manuscript of which is preserved at the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York (ms. ENA 2726), attests to the diversity of the Encaoua's intellectual production. This text blends literalist exegesis (peshat) and mystical interpretation (sod), in the tradition of the Sephardic commentators who refused to choose between the rational approach of Maimonides and the mystical approach of the Zohar.
One of the most significant contributions of the Encaoua to Maghrebi Judaism was the transmission of Castilian rabbinic law. The Takkanot (community ordinances) developed in Spain over the 13th–15th centuries constituted a legal corpus of remarkable sophistication, covering matrimonial law, the law of inheritance, commercial law, and relations with non-Jewish authorities. The Encaoua, in settling in the Maghreb, brought this Castilian legal tradition and grafted it onto the local practices of the toshavim (native) communities. The Keren Hemer of Abraham Ankawa, published in Livorno in 1869–1871, constitutes the most accomplished testimony of this transmission: it gathers the rulings of the Castilian judges who came to Morocco after 1492, creating a legal bridge between medieval Spain and the modern Maghreb.
MMJMM highlights the liturgical and halakhic school of Fès, one of the great centers of Sephardic rabbinic law in Morocco and a hub of the Castilian Takkanot in the Maghreb.