Yitzhak Kaduri
1898 CE–2006 CE · Modern · Baghdad
Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri (c. 1898–2006) was the most venerated Sephardic kabbalist of his generation. Born in Baghdad — where as a youth he encountered the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Hayyim) — he immigrated to Jerusalem in 1923 and settled in the Old City, studying under masters such as Rabbi Ezra Attiya and heading the Nahar Shalom yeshiva of kabbalists. Renowned for his command of the whole tradition, his blessings, and his amulets, he became a figure of mass devotion in his final decades; his funeral in 2006 drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Jerusalem.
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BaghdadIraq
What they did here
Born in Baghdad, where as a youth he encountered the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Hayyim).
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).
In Baghdad at the same time
Ben Ish Chai, Menahem Saleh Daniel, Ezra Dangoor, Shelomoh Tvena, Minhat Yehuda, Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim)
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Yitzhak Kaduri’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Ben Ish Chai, Ba'al HaLeshem, Menahem Saleh Daniel, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Ezra Dangoor, Alter of Slabodka, Zalman Sender Kahana-Shapiro, Dor Revi'i, Shelomoh Tvena, Minhat Yehuda, Zelig Reuven Bangis, Rav Kook, Moshe Mordechai Epstein, Imrei Emes, Yehuda Leib Chasman, Isser Zalman Meltzer, Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim), Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Yitzhak Kaduri’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Jewish world
- Elazar Menachem Man Shach (Ponevezh)· 1899 CE–2001 CE
- Rabbi Dovid Povarsky· 1902 CE–1999 CE
- Menachem Mendel Schneerson (7th Lubavitcher Rebbe)· 1902 CE–1994 CE
- Yeshayahu Leibowitz· 1903 CE–1994 CE
- Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (The Rav)· 1903 CE–1993 CE
- Nechama Leibowitz· 1905 CE–1997 CE
- R. Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam (Divrei Yatziv)· 1905 CE–1994 CE
- Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz· 1906 CE–1993 CE
- Rabbi Shimon Schwab· 1908 CE–1995 CE
- Eliezer Berkovits· 1908 CE–1992 CE
- Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam· 1908 CE–2000 CE
- R. Avigdor Miller· 1908 CE–2001 CE
- Rabbi Yisrael Zev Gustman· 1908 CE–1991 CE
- Rabbi Ephraim Oshry· 1908 CE–2003 CE
- R. Shalom Mashash· 1909 CE–2003 CE
- Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (Minchat Shlomo)· 1910 CE–1995 CE
- R. Yehuda Tzadka· 1910 CE–1991 CE
- R. Sholom Noah Berezovsky· 1911 CE–2000 CE
- Ephraim Urbach· 1912 CE–1991 CE
- Rabbi Shalom Schwadron· 1912 CE–1997 CE
- Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung· 1912 CE–1998 CE
- Rabbi Shneur Kotler· 1918 CE–1982 CE
- Rabbi Betzalel Zolty· 1920 CE–1982 CE
- Rabbi Nachum Partzovitz· 1923 CE–1986 CE
Scientists
Buddhist world
Christian world
Luminaries & Explorers world
Rulers world
- Deng Xiaoping· 1904 CE–1997 CE
- Richard Nixon· 1913 CE–1994 CE
- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi· 1919 CE–1980 CE
- Yuri Andropov· 1914 CE–1984 CE
- Konstantin Chernenko· 1911 CE–1985 CE
- Ronald Reagan· 1911 CE–2004 CE
- Emperor Hirohito (Showa)· 1901 CE–1989 CE
- Georgy Malenkov· 1902 CE–1988 CE
- Gerald Ford· 1913 CE–2006 CE
- Leonid Brezhnev· 1906 CE–1982 CE
- Gamal Abdel Nasser· 1918 CE–1970 CE
- Julius Nyerere· 1922 CE–1999 CE
- Lyndon B. Johnson· 1908 CE–1973 CE
- Kwame Nkrumah· 1909 CE–1972 CE
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.