R. Salman Mutzafi
1900 CE–1974 CE · Modern · Jerusalem
R. Salman Eliyahu Mutzafi (1900-1974) was one of the great Baghdadi-Jerusalem kabbalists of the 20th century and an outstanding disciple of R. Yehuda Fetaya. Born in Baghdad and orphaned young, he made aliyah in 1933 and joined the Beit El kabbalistic academy, where he became famed for his unbroken Lurianic kavvanot.
His Aviv homiletic commentary and his Si'ach Yitzchak prayer-book commentary remain widely used. Known for his ascetic life of fasting and prayer, he was a counselor to senior Sephardic poskim including R. Ovadia Yosef. His son R. Ben Zion Mutzafi (b. 1948) continues the lineage as a senior Jerusalem-Sephardic kabbalist.
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BaghdadIraq
What they did here
Born in Baghdad; orphaned young and educated by the Ben Ish Chai's circle.
Baghdad in this era
Baghdad in the modern era remained home to one of the Middle East's oldest and most culturally rich Jewish communities, even as the wider world convulsed with emancipation, nationalism, and catastrophe. Under Ottoman rule through the nineteenth century and then British mandate after World War I, Iraqi Jews—numbering around 150,000 by the twentieth century's mid-point—enjoyed relative security and prosperity, dominating trade and serving as merchants, money-changers, and professionals. The community maintained vibrant yeshivas where traditional Babylonian Jewish learning flourished, and Hebrew printing presses produced works that circulated throughout the Levantine world. Yet this stability proved fragile: growing Arab nationalism, the founding of Israel in 1948, and subsequent Arab-Israeli wars ignited violent upheaval. Massive Jewish emigration followed, with over 100,000 Iraqi Jews airlifted to Israel between 1950 and 1952 in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. The storied Jewish quarter, once filled with synagogues and study halls stretching back centuries, emptied within a generation. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, born in Baghdad in 1920, carried this heritage of Iraqi Jewry with him into his monumental career as a leading Sephardic halakhic authority and spiritual guide to hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide.
About Baghdad
Major Mizrahi center; home of Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai).
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.