שלמה איילון

Rav Shlomo Ayllon (c. 5415/1655–5488/1728) served as chacham of the Sephardic kehillah of London and afterward of Amsterdam. The family name comes from the town of Ayllón, in what is today the province of Segovia. He spent his youth in Salonica, which was most likely his birthplace, in years when the circles that had followed Shabbetai Tzvi were still active there, and he broke with them openly before coming to Europe. His daughter Gratia was born in Yerushalayim in 5447/1687, and the following year he traveled to Europe as a meshulach for the kehillot of Eretz Yisrael, gathering funds for the poor of the Land while his wife and children remained in Tzfat. He was in Livorno in 5448/1688, went on from there to Amsterdam and then to London, and after a few months was appointed chacham of the London kehillah on 6 June 5449/1689.

He spent eventful years in London. A member of the kehillah, Yaakov Fidanque, challenged his appointment, and the learned men of the congregation would not accept his authority. A haskamah was given of the Ma’amad forbidding anyone but the appointed chacham to rule in halacha. He was still writing to Rav Yaakov Sasportas about the strain six years later, in 5456/1696, and in 5461/1701 he was glad to accept a post as associate rav of the Sephardic kehillah of Amsterdam. Soon after his arrival the Ma’amad asked him to examine a work of Miguel Cardoso; he found nothing objectionable in it, but the other authorities whose opinion the Ma’amad then sought ruled that the book be burned, and so it was.

In Amsterdam he was drawn into the controversy over Nechemiah Chayun. Rav Tzvi Ashkenazi, the Chacham Tzvi, then rav of the Ashkenazic kehillah of the city, examined Chayun’s writings in 5471/1711 at the request of Rav Moshe Chagiz and declared them heretical, and on 23 July 5473/1713 the two placed Chayun and his book under cherem. The Ma’amad, unwilling to accept the ruling of a rav from outside their own community, asked Rav Shlomo to appoint a committee of his own; its finding, announced in the Portuguese shul on 7 August 5473/1713, cleared Chayun. The dispute drew in rabbanim of Germany, Austria and Italy, and ended with the Chacham Tzvi leaving Amsterdam. When Chayun returned to the city some years later, Rav Shlomo would no longer receive him, and it was said that on hearing of the Chacham Tzvi’s passing in 5478/1718 he acknowledged that he had wronged him. He married Lea Medina in 5477/1717 and was niftar in Amsterdam in 5488/1728, leaving a kabbalistic work whose manuscript is kept in the library of Jews’ College in London.