משה בן מכיר

Rav Moshe ben Machir, also called Moshe ben Yehuda HaMachiri, was a mekubal of Tzfat in the sixteenth century and rosh yeshiva of the chaburah at Ein Zeitim, the settlement just north of the city. He is known above all as the author of Seder HaYom, the sefer in which the words of Modeh Ani appear for the first time.

What his yeshiva looked like from the inside can be learned from letters it sent abroad between 5358/1598 and 5361/1601 asking for support, and from a manuscript holding its ten takanot. Its shape was the one common to Sephardic yeshivot of those years — a circle of talmidei chachamim who learned together under a head called the Rishon or the Chacham. One takanah set up shifts of learners so that Torah would not cease in the beit midrash by day or by night, the seder covering Mishnayot, Zohar, Gemara, Mikra and the writings of the Rif and the Rambam; others governed tefillah and berachot; the last fixed a weekly ascent to the nearby kever of the tanna Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai, to daven there on behalf of all Yisrael. The chaburot around them — those of Rav Shlomo Alkabetz, the Arizal, Rav Chaim Vital and Rav Elazar Azikri — gave themselves to nistar; Rav Moshe’s men shared their avodah of teshuvah and sigufim but built it on the ordinary learning of Gemara and halachah.

The yeshiva was in Ein Zeitim from about 5342/1582 until a band of Ishmaelites came to rob them, whereupon they fled and the yeshiva moved into Tzfat in 5361/1601. Seder HaYom, a work at once halachic and kabbalistic, sets out by its own introduction how a man should order his days and his nights, his Shabbat and his yamim tovim, and the round of the whole year — at home, on the road, lying down and rising. It was first printed in Venice in 5359/1599 by his son-in-law Rav Shlomo Mor David, who was there raising funds for his father-in-law’s yeshiva, and again in Venice in 5365/1605; many editions have followed, and a good number of minhagim and nuschaot in use today are drawn from it. Bound at its end are his commentary on the mishnah of ben chamesh shanim l’Mikra and a biur on Kohelet. A halachic commentary on the sefer, Amrei Yisrael by Rav Yisrael Meir Brenner, appeared in 5755/1995, setting its hanhagot beside the rulings of the poskim.