אפרים אנקווה

Rabbi Ephraim ben Yisrael Alnaqua, Ephraim Alnaqua, אפרים אנקווה (d. 1442), was a rishon of Spain and North Africa, a rav, physician, paytan and philosopher, and the founder of the Jewish community of Tlemcen in Algeria. He was born in Toledo to Rabbi Yisrael Alnaqua, the author of Menorat HaMaor, who was burned at the stake in the persecutions of 1391 with a sefer Torah in his hands. As a young man he was sent to learn under Rabbeinu Nissim Gerondi, the Ran, who also taught the Rivash and the other great early sages of Algeria.

When the pogroms of 1391 swept over the communities of Spain and Jews were put to the choice of baptism or death, Rabbi Ephraim fled the country. From then on he lived in mourning, taking on afflictions and a life of abstinence over the destruction of Spanish Jewry. After two years of wandering he reached Marrakesh in Morocco in 1393, where he was honored with delivering drashot. From there he went on to the town of Honein, where he was asked to serve as dayan and moreh tzedek, and later he continued to Tlemcen.

The story of his arrival in Tlemcen is told as a legend: he came riding on a lion, with a serpent for its halter, and Azulai counts him among the workers of wonders. After every other physician had failed, he healed the only daughter of the Zayyanid king. He refused the gold and silver the king offered him and asked instead that the Jews living in the area around Tlemcen be allowed to gather in the city; that was the beginning of the community. His first act was to build a large synagogue, which still stands and bears his name, with a pasuk from Yirmiyahu engraved above the rabbi’s seat.

He was known as a tzaddik and a baal mofet. He was niftar on Motzaei Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh Kislev 5203, the fourth of November 1442, and his grave in Tlemcen draws pilgrims from across North African Jewry.

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