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, Minhat Yehuda, Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim), Salman Mutzafi, Yaakov Mutzafi, Ovadia Yosef
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, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Alter of Slabodka, Zalman Sender Kahana-Shapiro, Dor Revi'i, 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, Yechiel Michel Tukatchinsky, Yisrael Zev Mintzberg, Tzvi Pesach Frank
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yitzhak Kaduri’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Buddhist world
Christian world
Hindu world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.