יוסף אירגס

Rav Yosef ben Emanuel Ergas (5445/1685 – 3 Sivan 5490/1730), known in English sources as Joseph Ergas, was an Italian rav and mekubal and one of the chief opponents of Nechemia Chiya Chayun and of the Shabtai Tzvi movement. He was born in Livorno to Rav Emanuel, rav of the kehillah; his mother’s father was Moshe Pinheiro, who had been a faithful follower of Shabtai Tzvi. He learned in his own city in the yeshiva of Rav Shmuel De Pas and was spoken of as a gaon while still young, and he learned Kabbalah for seven weeks under Rav Binyamin HaKohen Vitale, a talmid of Rav Moshe Zacuto. At eighteen he married a daughter of his mother’s sister, and they had three sons and three daughters, among them Rav Avraham and Rav Emanuel.

He settled for a time in Pisa, where he founded a yeshiva named Neve Shalom and two funds for tzedakah, one to provide for brides and one to clothe the poor. Returning to Livorno he was appointed rav of the kehillah. Rabbanim from across Italy and France sent their questions to him and had them back in clear and very brief language; sixty-eight of his teshuvot were printed as Divrei Yosef. The chief of his talmidim was Rav Malachi HaKohen, who wrote the encyclopedic Yad Malachi.

In 1710 Nechemia Chiya Chayun came to Livorno to obtain his haskamah on a sefer; Rav Yosef saw what the man was and drove him from the city. Chayun went on to Amsterdam and printed sharp attacks against him, and Rav Yosef answered with two works of polemic, Tochachat Megulah and HaTzad Nachash, printed in London in 5475/1715. He is best known for Shomer Emunim, in which he clarifies the truth of Kabbalah, built as a dialogue between Shaltiel, a Talmudic chacham, and Yehoyada, a mekubal; in it he argues against Rav Emanuel Chai Ricci, who held the tzimtzum to be literal. The sefer became a foundation of Kabbalah learning and the clearest voice for the non-literal reading of the tzimtzum, and to keep it apart from the later Shomer Emunim of Rav Aharon Roth it is called Shomer Emunim HaKadmon. He left also Minchat Yosef and Mevo Petachim, an introduction to the rules of the writings of the Arizal. In 5490/1730, during the controversy over Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, he wrote to the Ramchal’s rebbe Rav Yeshaya Bassan to weigh the matter, but was niftar in Livorno at forty-five before he could decide it.