Rav Chaim Pinto
Kabbalist of Casablanca, known as HaKoton, remembered for his modesty, his closeness to the poor and his gift of prophecy.
Biography
Early years
Rav Chaim Pinto zt"l, known as HaKoton (the small) to distinguish him from his grandfather, Rav Chaim Pinto HaGadol (the great), was born in Mogador, today Essaouira, Morocco, in 5625 (1855). He was the son of Rav Yehuda Pinto. His grandfather, Rav Chaim HaGadol, is buried in Mogador.
The family traced its roots to Rav Yosef Pinto, who left Spain for Rome with twenty-six talmidim after the expulsion of 1492. Rav Chaim HaGadol was Rav Yosef's great-grandson. Rav Yosef later had to flee to Damascus after local priests trapped him into a theological debate that he lost.
Life and conduct
Rav Chaim was known for his modesty and for his gift of prophecy. It was his pious habit to collect money from people and distribute it to the poor. When he had finished giving it all out, he would wash the scarf he had used for the collection. Once he was asked why he did this, and he answered that nothing in the world is dirtier than money, and he washed the scarf to cleanse it. He himself lived from what people gave him, yet he always said that money is filthy.
Every day he would also visit the home of a poor person and ask what had been cooked that day, saying he wished to taste it. A poor family's meal was vegetables and a piece of bread, or bread with tea and a vegetable salad. Rav Chaim would sit down and eat with them, bring them joy, and bless them when he left. He did not always like to eat at the tables of the wealthy. He said that the Shechinah and blessing rest more on the table of the poor than on that of the rich, and that yiras Shamayim (fear of Heaven) is acquired in want and poverty, not in prosperity.
Before he left Mogador, people used to gather at his home on Motzei Shabbos for Melave Malka. Rabbanim, elderly people, women and children all came. After Maariv he would take out his violin and sing the poems of his holy grandfather and of Rav Yisroel Najara. It is told that more than once he forgot himself and played until dawn. He would tell his listeners that he was tired and that they should go to sleep so they could rise for tefillah, and they would answer that day had already broken and it was time to daven. They davened, ate breakfast and went home.
The rabbanim of the city were puzzled by one thing. At certain verses of the poems, Rav Chaim would tremble, and all his listeners felt the same trembling. He gave no explanation. When people pressed him, he became upset and warned that if they asked again he would keep refusing and would no longer allow them to gather in his home on Motzei Shabbos. The rabbanim asked his forgiveness and left, and no one asked again. They had understood his greatness.
Later years and passing
As the Jewish population of Mogador began to thin out, Rav Chaim moved to Casablanca. His son, Rav Moshe Aharon Pinto, stayed behind in Mogador so that his father's shul would not close.
Rav Chaim left this world on 15 Cheshvan 5698 (October 20, 1937). The house in Casablanca where he lived, at 36 Commandant Provost, has become a place of pilgrimage, where Jews come to light candles.
Stories
A Daughter Within Two Days
A woman named Aziza related that her cousin once came to fetch her, insisting she must come to their home. There she found Rav Chaim Pinto, who welcomed her five times over. When she blessed him in return, he told her that she would give birth in two days to a daughter who would grow rich.
He said that in the merit of his father and grandfather she would have a girl, that she already had a son at home, that she would recover easily and give birth without pain, and that she would celebrate a beautiful naming. Two days later, after feeling some discomfort, she gave birth to a girl, and from then on the family lived better than ever.
Rav Chaim had also told her that after the girl she would bear a boy, and that she must not name him after her own father. Her father had already passed away, and she named her son after him anyway. A year later the boy died, exactly as the Rav had warned her.
A Husband for the Rich Man's Daughter
It is told that Rav Chaim once received a letter from a wealthy man in Rabat, asking him to find an honest young man, learned in Torah, to marry his daughter. Days passed and Rav Chaim could not settle on anyone suitable. One night, unable to sleep, he went out with his servant to the Mellah, the enclosed Jewish quarter, and saw people leaving a shul. He went inside and found a young man learning Maseches Yevamos with great diligence.
Rav Chaim whispered to his servant that they must leave, so as not to disturb the learning and be responsible for interrupting it. They walked on, and a Jew invited them in for coffee. When they returned to the shul some time later, the young man was asleep on the floor. Rav Chaim remarked that he was fulfilling the words of the Tanna, to sleep on the ground, and told his servant to let him rest and bring him the next day.
In the morning Rav Chaim asked whether he had no place to sleep. The young man explained that he was an orphan from another town, and that his friends in the yeshiva brought him food. He was twenty-six. Rav Chaim told him that he was old enough to marry, and when the young man protested that he could not even support himself, Rav Chaim gave him money for new clothes and sent him to Rabat. The wealthy man married him to his daughter, and the couple raised sons and daughters while the husband continued to learn. The man who tells this story says that he later visited him in Amsterdam, where he heard it from him directly.
Family & talmidim
C:
Rav Moshe Aharon Pinto: