אליהו הכהן האתמרי

Rav Eliyahu ben Shlomo Avraham HaKohen HaItamari (c. 5419/1659–8 Adar II 5489/1729), known in English sources as Elijah ben Solomon Abraham ha-Kohen, was a dayan, darshan and mekubal of Izmir, known above all for his Shevet Mussar. He was born in Izmir and remained there all his life, learning under Rav Binyamin Melamed, one of the rabbanim of the city, whose hesped he later set down in his Midrash Eliyahu. In his derashot he called for plain living and for distance from the pleasures of this world, and he set out at length the reward of the World to Come against the punishment of Gehinnom. He stood against Shabtai Tzvi and his circle, and against those who reckoned the time of the end, which cost him much grief at home.

A wealthy man himself, he pressed the wealthy of the kehillah to scatter their money in tzedakah. He treated poverty and inequality as a religious and moral failing that the kehillah was bound to repair, and described the rich as guardians appointed over the money of the poor. He served as such a guardian himself, gathering funds from the wealthy and dividing them among the poor, and his writings show a close acquaintance with what the poor suffer in body and in spirit.

He wrote dozens of sefarim, mostly mussar, midrash and commentary on Tanach. Shevet Mussar, first printed in Constantinople in 5472/1712, is built of fifty-two chapters, one for each week of the year, and has appeared in scores of editions and in Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic. Midrash Talpiyot gathers midrashim and aggadot from the two Talmuds, from the Zohar and from many other works, in 926 sections in alphabetical order — 926 being the gematria of Talpiyot — and takes up the identification of the stones of the choshen. His Yalkut HaItamari gave him the name by which he is called. Beside these are Meil Tzedakah on tzedakah, Aggadat Eliyahu in two parts on the aggadot of the Yerushalmi, Velo Od Ela on every place in the Talmud and midrash opening with that phrase, Megaleh Tzefunot and Chut Shel Chesed on the Chumash, Eliyahu Zuta on Avot, Semuchim LaAd on the parashiyot, and Minchat Eliyahu, his derashot. He was niftar in Izmir on 8 Adar II 5489/1729.