דוד בן שמעון

Rav David ben Shimon (5586/1826–18 Kislev 5640/1879), known as the Tzuf Devash and by the acronym Radvash, was the founder and father of the North African kehillah of Yerushalayim. Born in Rabat in Morocco to a family of means, he learned under Rav Saadia ben Marji and taught Torah to many in his native city — but his heart was set on Eretz Yisrael, and in 5614/1854 he went up to Yerushalayim, his talmidim following after him.

He found the Maghrebi Jews of the city in poverty and without a voice, and gave his life to raising them. He organized them as an independent kehillah — the Vaad HaEdah HaMaaravit, the first community to stand apart from the Sephardi umbrella — built its shuls and batei medrash, sent shadarim to the kehillot of the Maghreb, and published every donation and expense openly in the newspaper Havatzelet, that the givers might see where their money went. They called him “father of the orphans and dayan of the widows”; he opened a butcher shop that sold only to the poor. His crowning work came in 5627/1867: on land he purchased outside the walls he built Machane Yisrael, among the very first neighborhoods of the new Yerushalayim, with its shuls, batei medrash, mikvaot and shelter for the needy. Sir Moses Montefiore lent his hand to the community at the Radvash’s request.

He was also a rosh yeshiva, posek and av beit din, and a lover of Eretz Yisrael in his pen: his Shaar HeChatzer, first of the Shaarei Tzedek volumes, gathers the words of Chazal in praise of the Land with his own chiddushim — Rav Chaim Palagi wrote of it that “he left no corner untouched.” Further volumes treat the halachot and minhagim of the Land, among them Shaar HaMifkad, printed in Egypt by his son. He was niftar at fifty-four and rests on Har HaZeitim; his sons Rav Refael Aharon and Rav Masoud Chai ben Shimon each served in turn as chacham bashi of Egypt, and the yeshiva Magen David in Yerushalayim carried his name.