אליהו קפשאלי

Rav Eliyahu Capsali ben Elkanah (c. 5245/1485–c. 5310/1550) was the last and best known of the chachamim of the Capsali family of Candia on the island of Crete, a distinguished Romaniote house whose members stood more than once at the head of the island’s kehillah. His father Rav Elkanah, who led Cretan Jewry and had learned under the Mahari Mintz in Padua, taught him in his early years. On 27 Kislev 5269/1508 he reached Padua to learn in the famous yeshiva of the Mahari Mintz, who was niftar a few days after his arrival; the Mahari Mintz’s son Rav Avraham took his place, but Rav Eliyahu received his Torah chiefly from Rav Yisrael of Perusha, Rav Yisrael ben Yechiel Ashkenazi, a talmid-chaver of the Mahari Mintz.

The German occupation of Padua in 5269/1509 cut his learning there short and he moved to Venice, where he continued before Rav Yisrael and before his mother’s brother, Rav Menachem ben Shmuel Delmedigo. In 5274/1514 he left Venice for his birthplace and became head of the kehillah of Candia; in 5288/1528 he was appointed rav over all the kehillot of Candia, where he enacted weighty takanot, some of which carry his signature. He took no salary for the position and gave of his own money to tzedakah and to pidyon shevuyim. Among the chachamim of his day with whom he was in contact were Rav Yaakov Beirav and Rav Yosef Karo.

In 5283/1523, shut in during an outbreak of plague in Candia, he wrote Seder Eliyahu Zuta, an account of the Ottoman lands and of the Jews within them down to his own time, built of dozens of short episodes from Spain, Italy and the Ottoman Empire; his father’s hosting of the exiles of Spain on erev Tisha B’Av of 5253 is set down there. He also wrote Divrei HaYamim LeMalchut Venetzia on Venice and the state of its Jews, and Noam Choblim. He had no children. The large library he kept held rare Hebrew manuscripts, which passed in time to the Vatican library in Rome, among them an old manuscript of the Sifra with Babylonian vocalization.