Moed Lekol Chai
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R
Chaim Palagi
Chaim Palagi
1788 CE–1868 CE · Acharonim · Izmir (Smyrna)
Chaim Palagi (1788–1868) spent his life in Izmir (Smyrna), then a leading center of Ottoman Jewry. He studied under his grandfather Joseph Raphael Hazzan, himself a chief rabbi of the city, and under Isaac Gatigno. Serving as a rabbi from a young age, he headed the Bet Yaakov study house from 1828 and later presided over the city's religious court, before being appointed Hakham Bashi—chief rabbi of Izmir—around 1855, during the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a role he held until his death. Palagi was among the most prolific halachic writers of his century, producing more than seventy works spanning law, ethics, and Kabbalah, among them Kaf HaChaim and Moed Lekol Chai, the latter devoted to the festivals and their customs. In 1864 he received the Ottoman Order of the Mecidiye, and his funeral drew the city's dignitaries and a military escort.
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Stop 1 of 11788–1868Died
Izmir (Smyrna)Western Anatolia — major Sephardic port
What they did here
Died here.
Izmir (Smyrna) in this era
Izmir from the 17th through 19th centuries was a major Sephardic halachic and commercial center, serving as the principal Ottoman port of Levantine trade with Western Europe. Spanish-exile families (Palaggi, Yedid, Hazan, Benveniste) anchored the rabbinate. R. Chaim Benveniste (Knesset HaGedolah, Chief Rabbi 1660-1673), R. Eliyahu HaCohen (Shevet Musar, fled Aleppo for Izmir), R. Hayyim Palaggi (Chief Rabbi 1855-1868, with over 70 books to his name), and dozens of major poskim made Izmir one of the most-cited Sephardic centers of acharonic responsa. The community was also the epicenter of the catastrophic Sabbatean movement: Sabbatai Zvi (1626-1676) was born and active here. The Izmir community produced its own Hebrew printing presses from the 17th century, publishing major Sephardic responsa and homiletics.
About Izmir (Smyrna)
Izmir (historically Smyrna), a port city on the Aegean coast of western Anatolia, became one of the foremost Sephardic Jewish centers of the Ottoman Empire after waves of settlement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its rabbinate produced major halachic authorities, including Rabbi Chaim Benveniste, author of the Kenesset HaGedolah, who led the community in the seventeenth century, and Rabbi Chaim Palagi (1788-1868), a prolific posek who became chief rabbi of the city. Izmir was also the birthplace of Shabbetai Tzvi.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Chaim Palagi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Islamic world
Buddhist world
Christian world
Works(2)
Kaf HaChaim
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