שמואל אבואב

Rav Shmuel ben Avraham Aboab (c. 5370/1610–5454/1694), known in English sources as Samuel Aboab, was av beit din of Venice and among the greatest of the chachamim of Italy. He was born in Hamburg into the Aboab family; his father, Rav Avraham Aboab, had lived earlier as a secret Jew and was one of the founders of the Portuguese kehillah in that city. At thirteen his father sent him to learn in Venice under Rav David Franco, and at eighteen he married Franco’s daughter, Mazal-Tov.

He was appointed chief rabbi of Verona while still a young man, and his name drew talmidim to him — among them Rav Shimshon Morpurgo and Rav Yaakov Chagiz — while the rabbanim of Italy brought their hardest shailot to his door. Besides his Torah he knew Latin, German, Ladino and Italian. In 5410/1650 he was made av beit din of Venice. There he set himself against the Shabtai Tzvi movement, and Natan of Gaza, coming before him, admitted that what he had prophesied about the man had been nothing but deception.

Rav Shmuel labored to draw support from the kehillot of western Europe for the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, above all for Chevron (Hebron), and in 5403/1643 he gathered funds to redeem the Jews of Kremsier taken captive by the Swedes. His later years were heavy with illness and with trouble in his house, and a dispute with the doge drove him out of Venice; only shortly before his passing was he permitted to return and take up his office again, which his son Rav Yosef, who later went up to Chevron, had been filling in his absence. His teshuvot were printed by his son Rav Yaakov in Venice in 5462/1702 as Devar Shmuel, opening with a tzavaah to his four sons: never to say Hashem’s name without care, to be exact in all their dealings, never to speak ill of another or to fasten a mocking name on him, to see to the chinuch of the young, and to come to shul every day. His Sefer HaZichronot, printed in Prague, sets out ten principles for the keeping of the mitzvot, written to rouse the many to guard what is easily made light of.