Chacham Bentzion Abba Shaul
Rosh Yeshiva of Porat Yosef and a leading Sefardi posek, beloved for his ahavas Yisroel, his humility and the blessings that were fulfilled.
Biography
Early years
Chacham Bentzion Abba Shaul zt"l was born in Yerushalayim on 29 Tammuz 5684 (31 July 1924), the yahrzeit of Rashi. He was the eldest in a large family born to Rav Eliyahu and Rabbanit Banya Abba Shaul, who had come from Persia. Rav Eliyahu was a shoemaker by trade and also a Torah scholar and kabbalist, and he was his son's first teacher. He served for fifty years as gabbai of the Ohel Rachel synagogue in the Bukharim Quarter, and in his old age Ben Zion became rabbi of the shul while his brother Yaakov served as chazan.
The family was poor, but his parents were determined to raise talmidei chachamim. When the children came home from Talmud Torah, their mother Banya would hug them and say, “May you become talmidei chachamim,” and her prayers were answered, for all her children grew into Torah scholars. This was highly unusual, since at that time many families of Eastern and Sefardi background were drawn to send their children to Zionist schools. The family kept many halachic stringencies, grinding and baking their own matzos before Pesach and avoiding all processed foods, even sugar, during the Yom Tov itself, and he continued these practices in his own home.
It is told that his father grew up in a small village in Iran, where a Muslim ruler gave the Jews a choice between conversion and leaving the country. His family fled on the first ship they could find, bound for Eretz Yisroel, but instead of reaching the port of Haifa the ship crashed on the shore opposite the cave of Eliyohu HaNovi on Har Carmel. The young Eliyahu fell into the sea from a rescue boat and was saved by a gentile sailor who pulled him out. After much wandering, the family settled in Yerushalayim as followers of Rav Tzadka Chutzin.
Ben Zion grew up in the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood and was educated at the Bnei Zion Talmud Torah, founded by Rav Moshe Porush. When he grew older he helped Rav Porush recruit students, saving many children from spiritual harm.
His teachers
At the age of eleven he entered the Porat Yosef yeshiva, the leading Sefardi yeshiva of Yerushalayim. His teachers were Chacham Yaakov Adas, Chacham Tzadka Hotzin and the Rosh Yeshiva, Chacham Ezra Attiah, and his first teacher at Porat Yosef was Rav Yehuda Tzadka, who was then only twenty-one. His study partner was the future Chacham Ovadia Yosef.
He grew closest to Chacham Ezra Attiah, his primary mentor, who came to see him as his successor. Whenever the Rosh Yeshiva worked out a chiddush he would discuss it with Rav Ben Tzion and look forward to his reaction, while Rav Ben Tzion trembled in awe when he spoke with his Rosh Yeshiva. He followed his Rosh Yeshiva's opinions in all matters and showed the same approach in learning and in giving halachic direction.
He gave great effort to learning, reviewing each subject dozens of times until he knew most of Shas and the poskim by heart. It is told that when he was twenty, Chacham Attiah chose him to be tested by Rav Eliezer Silver, a prominent American rabbi who was visiting Eretz Yisroel with a prospective donor. Rav Silver asked a difficult question in the obscure order of Taharos, and when he heard the answer he remarked in astonishment that forty years earlier he had put the same question to Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, author of Ohr Somayach and Meshech Chochmah, and received the same reply. Afterwards Ben Zion confided to his Rosh Yeshiva that he had a second answer as well, but that he did not wish to show off once the first answer had secured the donation.
Marriage and family
In 1948 he married Mas'ouda Hadassah, the daughter of Rav Yosef Shaharabani, a Torah scholar and head of the Emet veShalom kabbalist yeshiva, and son of the kabbalist Rav Yehoshua Shaharabani, a talmid of the Ben Ish Chai. The couple lived in Yerushalayim's Beis Yisroel quarter. Ben Zion learned one on one with his father-in-law, and his wife attended his public lectures every Shabbos and tape-recorded his general lecture at the yeshiva. Many of his written works come from those tapes.
They had a daughter who passed away as a child. It is told that after ten miscarriages he went to the Chazon Ish and to the Belzer Rebbe and would not leave until each gave him a blessing for a child. Their son, Rav Eliyahu, named for his grandfather, is today head of the Or LeZion yeshiva.
Rosh Yeshiva and leader
After his marriage he became a teacher at the Bnei Zion Talmud Torah that he had attended as a boy, and he continued to learn at Porat Yosef. In time Chacham Attiah asked him to serve as Rosh Yeshiva, but he would not accept the post as long as his first teacher, Rav Yehuda Tzadka, was alive, and he agreed only to lecture there. After Rav Tzadka's passing in 1983, he took the position of Rosh Yeshiva of Porat Yosef, and he taught many students, several of whom are leading Torah scholars today.
His schedule was heavy. For four hours each morning he gave shiur in the yeshiva, and in the afternoons he taught the laws of the Shulchan Aruch to dayanim. For many years, while he was in good health, he taught halacha at Ohel Rachel every Shabbos before Mincha, on Friday afternoons he gave a halacha class and question-and-answer session to a packed hall, and on Shabbos he gave a discourse of three hours. It is said that when he finished a shiur his clothes were soaked with perspiration.
He was also well versed in Kabbalah. At first he learned privately on Friday nights. In the 1960s, seeing that the study of Kabbalah was fading, he gathered a group of kabbalists to learn at night, and once a year, on the yahrzeit of the Rashash, he joined them and showed his fluency in this hidden wisdom. He wrote thousands of halachic responsa for people from all walks of life, and Chacham Ovadia Yosef, who remained his friend, quotes him in his own responsa. He served as a mohel and brought thousands of boys into the Covenant of Avrohom, until the last fifteen years of his life, when his right arm was paralyzed.
He cared for his students as a father cares for sons. He worked to see that all of them married, and his Rebbetzin would suggest shidduchim among the girls who helped in her home. When he saw that married students could not manage on a kollel stipend, he set up a special Friday kollel and traveled to the United States to raise funds for it.
Education, community and blessings
He regarded the education of Jewish children as his life's work and founded scores of Talmud Torahs across Eretz Yisroel. Together with Rav Yehuda Tzadka and Chacham Ovadia Yosef he founded Maayan HaChinuch HaTorani, a network of hundreds of Sefardi Talmud Torahs, and he paid for its early stages himself, promising to fund the first year of any Talmud Torah opened in a city that had none. He also traveled to Iran, England, Italy, France, South America, Mexico, Panama, Colombia and the United States to strengthen Sefardi communities, setting up batei din and providing shochtim, mohalim and Rabbonim, and so held back assimilation and the influence of heretical streams.
Though he preferred to stay within the four cubits of halacha, he joined the leaders of Torah Jewry in battles for the sanctity of Shabbos, against mixed swimming pools and against autopsies. In 5732 (1972) he stood at the forefront of the struggle against compulsory army service for girls. With Rav Yehuda Tzadka he drafted a halachic ruling that this fell in the category of yehareg ve'al ya'avor, to be killed rather than transgress, and four hundred Torah leaders signed it.
He was well known for blessings that were fulfilled. When his shamash asked why they always came true, he answered that anyone who loves every Jew can do the same. To another he explained that Hashem told Avrohom, “I will bless those who bless you,” and that when people came to him and kissed his hand they were blessing him, and whoever blesses a Jew is blessed in return.
Later years and passing
In 5743 (1983), while giving a hesped at the funeral of Rav Yaakov Mutzafi, he suddenly felt ill, and shortly afterwards he suffered a stroke. Part of his body was left paralyzed and his speech was slurred. Over the next fifteen years he suffered a series of smaller strokes that left him in a wheelchair, and his eyesight faded until he lost his sight. He kept teaching Torah and taking part in communal affairs.
His great knowledge became even clearer in these years. Students came to read the Gemara to him, and one boy remembered being corrected on a Rashi in Maseches Nazir and another on a Tosafos in Gittin. His son said that when he read the Rambam to him, his father corrected him as well.
Chacham Bentzion passed away in Yerushalayim in Tammuz 5758 (1998), and the funeral was held on the 19th of Tammuz. A great multitude, estimated at two hundred thousand, came from every community, Sefardi, Chassidic and Ashkenazi. He was buried in the Sanhedria Cemetery in Yerushalayim, where his wife is also buried.
Legacy
Chacham Bentzion Abba Shaul left behind Or LeZion, his responsa and rulings, which appears in several parts, together with chiddushim on Yevamos, Kesubos and Shevi'is, and Zichron Hadassah, a work on mussar and hashkafa named for his wife. He is remembered as a posek and Rosh Yeshiva who lifted Sefardi Torah education across Eretz Yisroel, and as a Jew whose love for every other Jew was complete and who was never confined to any one circle.
Stories
A Blessing for Every Siren
Ambulances racing down Malchei Yisroel Street in Geula were a regular sound near the Porat Yosef yeshiva. Each time a siren passed, Rav Ben Tzion would pause, bless the unknown patient with a speedy recovery, and then quietly return to his shiur or his learning. A student once asked why his blessings were so effective, and he answered simply that he really loved people.
Before going to sleep each night he forgave everyone who had hurt him that day, and he said the bedtime prayer of forgiveness with real sincerity. When someone once insulted him deeply, a friend asked whether he had still said it that night. He admitted it was hard. Lying in bed, he told Hashem that his anger was justified but asked what he should do, skip the prayer? He sat up and struggled for a long time to judge the man favorably, and only when he felt no trace of resentment did he lie down and say the words.
His method for getting along with others was a kind of arithmetic. Instead of counting what others owed him, he counted what he owed them: the mitzvos between one person and another, such as loving your neighbor, not hating your brother in your heart, not carrying tales and not taking revenge. How could he quarrel, he would ask, with people to whom he owed so much? Even the sight of small children walking to cheder filled his heart with love for all of Klal Yisroel.
The Boy Pulled From the Sea
As with many gedolei Yisroel, miraculous events are told of the parents of Rav Ben Tzion before his birth. His father, Rav Eliyahu, was a boy in a small Persian village when a local ruler ordered the Jews to convert or leave. His grandfather took the family onto the first ship he could find, bound for Eretz Yisroel.
The ship never reached the port of Haifa. It ran aground on the coast beneath the cave of Eliyohu HaNovi on Har Carmel. Rescuers came out and began tossing passengers into rowboats, and young Eliyahu was thrown, but he missed the boat and landed in the water. A gentile sailor spotted the drowning child, hauled him out and saved his life.
The family wandered for a time and finally settled in Yerushalayim, where they followed Rav Tzadka Chutzin. Rav Eliyahu later married Banya, a woman devoted to Torah. She would hug her children when they came home from cheder and bless them that they should become talmidei chachamim, and all of them did.
Advice That Worked
People came to Rav Ben Tzion for blessings and advice as well as for Torah. Once a father came whose son was critically ill. The doctors had proposed a very risky treatment, and the father did not know whether to agree. Rav Ben Tzion told him to take the boy out of the hospital.
This turned out to be far from simple. The hospital would not hand over the medical records, and the staff even called the police, and charges were avoided only because a community leader stepped in. The boy got better without any of that treatment, which could have had dreadful results. More than once Rav Ben Tzion ruled against the doctors' opinion, and events proved him right every time. He had never studied medicine or used X-rays and ultrasound, but the Chovos HaLevavos teaches that one who lives with emunah can see without eyes and hear without ears, for his soul perceives.
His advice on family matters was fresh and unexpected. A father whose son had left yeshiva complained that the boy not only wandered the streets but had even asked for a motorcycle. “Buy him one,” Rav Ben Tzion said. The father was surprised but did as he was told. Seeing his father reach out to him, the young man responded warmly, and in time he went back to yeshiva.
I Am Not a Talmid Chochom
Rav Ben Tzion Mutzafi, Rosh Yeshiva of Bnei Tzion, shared several stories about his Rebbe's humility. His father was the mekubol Rav Suleiman Mutzafi. In 5723 Yeshivas Porat Yosef ruled that every one of its Rabbonim and teachers had to put on a long rabbinical coat, and Rav Ben Tzion was deeply troubled. His colleagues told him that he would get used to it, but he said that was not the point. How could he wear a rabbinical coat when he was not a talmid chochom?
On one Purim, when wine makes secrets slip out, he told his guests what he truly wanted. “Pray for me,” he said, “that I should merit to know one halacha perfectly.”
One evening someone accidentally locked the yeshiva kitchen, and a hundred and twenty students were about to go hungry, with great loss of learning. Rav Mutzafi asked what to do. Rav Ben Tzion took money from his pocket and told him to send one student for pitas and another for falafel and tomatoes. Soon he was seen in a side room, quickly cutting the pitas and filling them, and then he served each student himself and wished him to enjoy it. The students were stunned. He hurried back to his learning, and that night they learned with extra enthusiasm.
Even after recovering from his stroke he kept attending his students' weddings. At one of them the students formed circles and sang a song to the king, wishing him added days of life, to honor him. He felt uncomfortable at being honored in this way, pointed to the chosson and said that a groom is like a king, and the song was in his honor.
Love of Hashem
His eyes shone and his face glowed whenever Rav Ben Tzion spoke of loving Hashem. He told his students how to strengthen yiras Shomayim, and he said that people sometimes search for mitzvos without realizing that hundreds lie within reach. One who guards his eyes from forbidden sights earns hundreds of mitzvos at once.
Once he had recovered from the stroke, he confided to his brother-in-law, Rav Reuven Sharbani, that while ill he had not worried about how long he would live. His concern was whether he would be able to face the Heavenly Court and answer for his deeds.
Kissing His Parents' Hands
Rav Ben Tzion spared no effort in honoring his parents. In the years of the War of Independence his home was in Katamon, yet every Friday afternoon he made his way across the city to his parents, who lived close to the Jordanian border, in order to kiss their hands. He then walked home through the dark streets, when it was dangerous to be outside. He followed the teaching of the Arizal in Shaar HaKavonos that one should kiss one's parents' hands every Shabbos. On Shabbos mornings he again walked to their neighborhood to daven in the Ohel Rachel shul that his father had founded.
His respect for his wife, Rebbetzin Hadassa, was just as well known. He taught his students that when a husband and wife merit it, the Shechinah rests between them, and where the Shechinah rests, the Soton cannot enter, nor can poverty or illness. He urged them to honor their wives in deed, thought and speech, to buy them jewelry and things they like, to speak pleasantly, to think well of them and to judge them favorably. He practiced what he taught.
Volunteer for Hashem
Rav Ben Tzion served Hashem with a joy that was contagious and that shaped his halachic rulings and his advice. Once he was teaching the halacha that a Jew may not ask a gentile to extinguish a fire on Shabbos, even when all his possessions will burn. A student pictured himself in that situation and cried out that surely he was not meant to watch everything he owned go up in smoke.
“That is not what I said,” Rav Ben Tzion answered. What he meant, he explained, was that a person should dance and sing with joy at having the privilege of fulfilling the pasuk to love Hashem with all his heart, soul and might. The Sages explain that the word for might, me'odecha, includes one's possessions.
A newcomer to Torah once worried that the mitzvos would be too heavy a burden. Rav Ben Tzion told him there was no need to feel pressured. Each morning he should simply volunteer. Do not obligate yourself, he said, but volunteer, to put on tefillin, which is not so hard, and he showed him how. Then volunteer to daven, adding a little more each day. It is a privilege, he said, to serve in Hashem's volunteer corps.
Not Dazzled by Glitter
Rav Ben Tzion Mutzafi described his years as Rav Ben Tzion's student. Each day a different student had to explain the sugya, laying out the whole peshat precisely and carefully, with every question and answer, the reasoning of the one who asked and of the one who answered, and why no other resolution was possible. He had to know Rashi thoroughly, since no word in Rashi is superfluous, and to understand why Tosafos disagree and how Rashi would stand against their questions. Every question has an answer, Rav Ben Tzion would say, and you must find it. The Maharsha was a central part of each lesson, and sometimes the Rebbe would not give his own opinion until the Maharsha had been studied.
Once he put an explosive question to the class, and the students sat with their mouths open. Then he offered two brilliant answers and a plain one. After a pause he told them the third answer was the only true one. The first two merely glittered, and he gave them so that the students would learn to be impressed only by peshat, which must be completely true, and never by mere sparkle.
Although he was known for his brilliance, he kept out of the limelight and did not hurry to give rulings. Until Chacham Ezra Attiah passed away, out of respect for his Rebbe, he would not give halachic rulings even to students or close acquaintances. Afterwards he shared his halachic views only privately. Then Rav Yehuda Tzadka, Rosh Yeshiva of Porat Yosef, began sending people to him, telling them that Rav Ben Tzion was a great authority whose rulings they should follow, and that when he refused they should not give in. Rav Ben Tzion asked Rav Tzadka how he should respond to questions, and Rav Tzadka answered that he was well versed in halacha and there was no reason he should not rule. That is how his greatness as a posek came to light.
S.O.S.
Rav Ben Tzion guarded every moment of Torah study. While walking to yeshiva one morning, Rav Ben Tzion noticed a student reading a notice on a billboard. He suddenly called out “S.O.S., S.O.S.” and kept walking. The student ran after him and asked, out of breath, who needed help.
“The whole world,” Rav Ben Tzion told him. If Torah goes unlearned, the world will be destroyed. Suppose you drove an ambulance, or were a paramedic rushing to rescue someone; would you pause along the way to read the newest notices? A ben Torah has a far more urgent job, because the world exists only in the merit of Torah.
The Opening of the Aron Kodesh
Rav Ben Tzion considered Maayan HaChinuch HaTorani, the federation of Sefardi Talmud Torahs that he founded with Rav Yehuda Tzadka and Chacham Ovadia Yosef, to be his life's work, and in its early days he paid for it himself.
Once he saw a school bus pull up beside a Talmud Torah and the children pour out joyfully. He turned to the person with him and said that the opening of the bus doors reminded him of the opening of the Aron Kodesh when a Sefer Torah is taken out. He told him he was jealous of the driver, because those children were on their way to Har Sinai to receive the Torah.
How Can I Stay Home
After his stroke Rav Ben Tzion was confined to his home. The leaders of Lev L'Achim came to visit him before their annual gathering in Bnei Brak. They told him they understood that he could not attend, since he could hardly move and speaking was very hard, and they suggested that his son come in his place to bring his greetings.
He would not hear of it. In a slow, labored voice he told them that he could not stay home when the organization that does so much to rescue Jewish children held a gathering. And with great self-sacrifice he came. He was lifted into a car, and at the hall he was wheeled in on a wheelchair.
Meanwhile Rav Aron Leib Steinman, who had already stepped down from the dais and was heading out, heard that Rav Abba Shaul was making his way from Yerushalayim. Back he went to the dais, saying that he could not leave when Rav Ben Tzion was coming, and that he had to stay and honor him.
Linked to Klal Yisroel
On the final night of Rav Ben Tzion's life, a leading Rosh Yeshiva of the generation phoned him with an important question. When the Rosh Yeshiva called again the next day for the answer, the weeping of Rav Eliyahu, Rav Ben Tzion's only son, told him what had happened.
The funeral on the 19th of Tammuz 5758 drew masses of Jews from every circle. The Rabbonim who spoke at the funeral and during shiva represented the entire range of Chareidi Jewry, and everyone mourned the loss to Klal Yisroel. His son Rav Eliyahu also spoke. His father, he said, did not belong to one circle. He was linked to Klal Yisroel. He drew everyone close and loved them all, shared the community's pain and its joy, and everyone who met him felt a close kinship with him.
A miracle took place on the final day of shiva. A car loaded with explosives had been left in the center of Yerushalayim, and it abruptly burst into flames. Passersby hurried to rescue the driver, unaware that the vehicle was packed with explosives or that its driver was a terrorist. Had the bomb gone off in the heart of the city as planned, the disaster would have been enormous.
No one knows what became of all the patients in those ambulances that sped past Porat Yosef and received Rav Ben Tzion's blessings. And no one knows what took place in Heaven when the shiva ended. But we can imagine.
A Guarantee He Could Not Give
A woman who had undergone three Caesarean sections was told that her next child would also be born that way. She went to Rav Ben Tzion and told him she would not leave until he guaranteed her a natural birth. He agreed. After she left, his brother asked him how he could promise such a thing.
“I cannot promise anything,” he said, “but what could I do? She would not leave.” The woman had a natural birth. When her husband came to the shul to announce the miracle, Rav Ben Tzion complained that people were making him into an Admor.
Seforim
- Or LeZion: She'eilos U'Teshuvos: His responsa and rulings, published in several parts under the title Or LeZion.
- Chiddushim on Yevamos, Kesubos and Shevi'is: His Talmudic chiddushim on these three tractates.
- Zichron Hadassah: A work on mussar and hashkafa, named for his wife, Mas'ouda Hadassah.
Family & talmidim
Teachers: Rav Eliyahu Abba Shaul (his father and first teacher), Chacham Yaakov Adas, Chacham Tzadka Hotzin, Rav Yehuda Tzadka, Chacham Ezra Attiah (Rosh Yeshiva of Porat Yosef and his primary mentor), Rav Yosef Shaharabani (his father-in-law)
Talmidim: Rav Ben Tzion Mutzafi, Rosh Yeshiva of Bnei Tzion
Children: Rav Eliyahu Abba Shaul, head of the Or LeZion yeshiva, A daughter who passed away in childhood
Also on 18 Tammuz
All hilulos on 18 Tammuz ›Historical sources
- Yated Ne'eman