Rav Ezra Attiya of Syria
Rosh Yeshivah of Porat Yosef in Yerushalayim for forty-five years, whose talmidim became the leaders of Sephardic Torah life around the world.
Biography
Early years
Rav Ezra Attiya zt"l, one of the greatest teachers of Torah in the Sephardic world in the twentieth century, was born in Aleppo, Syria, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents had lost several children in infancy. Before his birth they travelled to the burial place of the Prophet Ezra and prayed that if they were blessed with a son, they would name him Ezra and see to it that he devoted himself to a life of Torah. He had one brother, Eliyahu. His father, a respected melamed (teacher) in Aleppo, was a direct descendant of Rav Shem Tov Attiya, a talmid of Rav Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulchan Aruch.
When Ezra was sixteen, the family moved to the Old City of Yerushalayim, where many rabbanim from Aleppo had settled. Soon afterwards his father passed away, leaving an impoverished widow and two orphans. His mother took work in the homes of wealthy families, and young Ezra gave his life to Torah. He learned, davened and even slept on a bench in a small beis midrash called Shoshanim LeDavid in the Bukharim neighborhood of the New City, covering vast amounts of Gemara with its commentaries and the poskim (halachic authorities). With little money at home, he ate a dry pita with salt each night.
In 1907 Rav Ezra Harari-Raful, another immigrant from Aleppo, founded the yeshivah Ohel Moed in Yerushalayim. Rav Ezra was invited to join its staff alongside the distinguished Sephardic rabbanim Rav Yosef Yedid HaLevi, head of the Sephardic beis din of Yerushalayim, Rav Shlomo Laniado and Rav Avraham Chaim Ades. He served as maggid shiur (lecturer).
Marriage and Egypt
In 1909 he married Bolissa Salem, the daughter of Rav Avraham Salem, a mekubal (Kabbalist). Their first son, born in 1911, passed away in infancy.
When World War I began, the Turkish army drafted every able-bodied man, grabbing them off the streets. Rav Ezra's brother Eliyahu died of pneumonia in the Turkish army. Two of the leading Sephardic sages of Yerushalayim, Rav Chaim Shaul Dweck HaKohen and Rav Avraham Ades, smuggled Rav Ezra out to Egypt on a forged Russian passport, a kind that needed no photograph.
He settled in Cairo and first tried his hand at business, but lost most of his money. Then he met Nissim Nachum, a wealthy refugee who knew him from Yerushalayim. With Nachum's support he opened a yeshivah named Ahavah VeAchvah in the basement of the Cairo rabbinate. Under his direction it grew to a hundred students, including many from non-observant homes. He also gave classes to working men and served as a dayan (rabbinical judge) on the Cairo beis din. When the war ended his wife joined him, and in 1922 the family, with their two children, returned to Yerushalayim.
Rosh Yeshivah of Porat Yosef
Back in Yerushalayim, Rav Ezra resumed teaching at Ohel Moed and also learned privately with Rav Chaim Shaul Dweck and Rav Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari. When the Porat Yosef yeshivah opened in 1923, Ohel Moed was merged into it, and he was appointed mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor). After the sudden passing of the rosh yeshivah, Rav Shlomo Laniado, in 1925, Rav Ezra was named to succeed him, and he held the position for forty-five years.
His tenure was marked by upheaval. When the riots of 1929 cut off access to the yeshivah building in the Old City, he moved the classes into several shuls in the New City and appointed advanced students to teach, while he personally supervised every location. This arrangement lasted eight years. In the 1948 war the yeshivah again moved into shuls in the Katamon, Geulah and Bukharim neighborhoods, and this time the main building in the Old City was burned to the ground by Jordanian troops. Thousands of Rav Ezra's unpublished writings were burned with it. He refused to rewrite them, feeling they had not been meant for publication, and said that his students would be his lifetime achievement.
In the mid-1950s Porat Yosef and the Gerrer community together bought a plot in Geulah, where the yeshivah and the Ger beis medrash were built side by side. The original campus in the Old City was rebuilt and reopened in the 1970s.
His method and his talmidim
Rav Ezra changed the way yeshivah education was seen in the Sephardic world. Until then, full-time Torah learning beyond bar mitzvah was reserved for exceptionally gifted boys, and most Sephardic boys went to work to help support their families. He did everything he could to let boys keep learning into their teens, often covering the cost himself. He was a father to every impoverished bochur, who knew that the Rav would never turn anyone away.
He was personally involved with every student. He tested the younger boys every two or three months, gave a daily shiur to the older boys and a nightly shiur to the married kollel students, and gave the whole yeshivah a weekly mussar talk, often lasting up to two hours. He developed a distinctly Sephardic approach to Torah and mussar. He always carried the classic Chovos HaLevavos (Duties of the Heart) on his person, urged his students to do the same, and had every class begin each day with a short lesson in mussar.
His son, Rav David Attiya, a dayan in Yerushalayim, relates that when he is asked what he remembers most about his father, he answers, "His learning. He didn't waste a minute." Rav Ezra taught his talmidim to learn the pshat (simple meaning) patiently and deeply, to review Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos, and to study the Maharsha, which he considered essential to every sugya. His clarity of thought attracted both Sephardic and Ashkenazic scholars. After a visit with him, the Chazon Ish said that the Rosh Yeshivah possessed the power of reasoning of one of the Rishonim. He was held in great respect by gedolim such as Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank. Rav Ovadiah Yosef testified at his funeral that his teacher had Choshen Mishpat, the monetary-law volume of the Shulchan Aruch, entirely by heart.
Rav Ezra also served as a dayan on the Sephardic beis din of Yerushalayim, and rabbanim and laymen alike sought his opinion. Thousands of his students went on to lead Sephardic communities in Eretz Yisroel, South America, South Africa, Europe and the United States. They included Rav Ovadiah Yosef and Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, who both served as Sephardic Chief Rabbis of Israel, the kabbalist Rav Yitzchak Kaduri, Rav Ben Tzion Abba Shaul, and Rav Yehuda Tzadka, who succeeded him as rosh yeshivah. Rav Baruch Ben Haim became a leader of the Syrian community in Brooklyn, Rav Eliyahu Ben Haim became rav of the Mashadi community in Great Neck, and Rav Zion Levy later became Chief Rabbi of Panama.
Later years and passing
As he grew older and weaker, Rav Ezra gave up many of his duties at the yeshivah, but he remained available to anyone who needed advice or guidance, and in this way he went on nurturing the leaders he had sent out to communities around the world.
Illness struck in 1969, and for a full year he lay in and out of consciousness. He passed away in Yerushalayim on the morning of 19 Iyar 5730 (1970) and was buried on Har HaMenuchos. His talmid Rav Yehuda Tzadka, who had been learning at his side from age fourteen, succeeded him as rosh yeshivah.
Stories
Every Difficulty Fell Away
Rav David Attiya recalls that one of the Ashkenazic sages of Yerushalayim once came to learn a complicated sugya with his father, a sugya that had left many questions. As was his way, Rav Ezra did not begin with the questions. First he went back with his guest over the basic sugya itself, the Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos. Then he brought the words of the Maharsha, which he considered a fundamental part of understanding any sugya.
Rav David was a boy then, and he remembers watching as the difficulties seemed to melt away one after another once the sugya was learned in its simple meaning. He says this was his father's trademark, to teach students to master the pshat and then to be very careful with Rashi and Tosafos. Rav Ezra often told his son that many questions are avoided when a person learns the plain meaning patiently and in depth, taking care with every word and even every letter.
Sharing a Salary
A poor boy from Iraq once applied to Porat Yosef but could not pay the tuition. Rav Ezra went to Rav Ben Tzion Chazan, the yeshivah's founder and secretary, and offered to take a cut in his own salary so the boy could be accepted. Rav Chazan answered by offering to reduce his own salary as well. The boy was admitted, and in time he became a respected talmid chacham.
The Rosh Yeshivah Behind the Counter
Rav Ezra was determined to keep the young Ovadiah Yosef in the world of Torah. One day the promising young scholar stopped coming to yeshivah for several days. Rav Ezra went to his home and was shocked by the poverty he found there. Ovadiah's father explained that he ran a small grocery and needed his son to work in the store. Rav Ezra tried to convince him how important learning was, but the father would not listen.
The next morning, when the father came to open his shop, he found the Rosh Yeshivah already standing behind the counter in a work apron. Rav Ezra explained that he had come early, when Ovadiah was opening up, and had told the boy that a substitute would work in his place without pay, and sent him back to yeshivah. Since the father needed help and could not afford to pay for it, Rav Ezra said, he would be that help himself, because his student's learning mattered more than his own time. The father gave in, and his son stayed in yeshivah.
Teachings
Learn the Plain Meaning Patiently
Rav Ezra taught his talmidim that many questions are avoided when a person learns the simple meaning of a sugya patiently and in depth, taking care to read every word, and every letter, with attention. He began every sugya with the basic Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos, and then turned to the Maharsha.
As related by his son, Rav David Attiya, in Mishpacha
Torah Learned Through Hardship
In his old age Rav Ezra told his students, "When I was young, I studied Torah through hardship. If we were truly fortunate, my mother and I had a whole pita to share. On rare occasions we also had an egg, which we divided in half. But the hunger did not bother me in the least."
His words to his students in his old age
Family & talmidim
Teachers: Rav Chaim Shaul Dweck HaKohen, Rav Shlomo Eliezer Alfandari
Talmidim: Rav Ovadiah Yosef, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, Rav Ben Tzion Abba Shaul, Rav Yehuda Tzadka, Rav Yitzchak Kaduri, Rav Baruch Ben Haim, Rav Eliyahu Ben Haim, Rav Zion Levy
Children: Rav David Attiya, dayan in Yerushalayim, A son who passed away in infancy (born 1911)
Also on 19 Iyar
All hilulos on 19 Iyar ›Historical sources
- Mishpacha