יעקב ספיר

Rav Yaakov HaLevi Sapir (5582/1822–6 Tammuz 5645/1885) was a talmid chacham of Yerushalayim, a shadar whose journeys crossed continents, and the author of Even Sapir — the classic account of the Jews of Yemen. Born in Ashmyany in Lita, he came to Eretz Yisrael as a boy of ten with his family, of the Perushim community of Tzfas; within a year he was orphaned of both parents, and at twelve lived through the attack on the Jews of Tzfas of 1834. He moved to Yerushalayim, where he grew into a melamed, sofer and secretary of the Perushim kehillah.

In 5619/1859 he was sent as a shadar to India and Australia to raise funds for the building of the Churva shul in Yerushalayim. Put off his ship in Yemen after being robbed of his money, he turned misfortune into a discovery: he traveled among the Jews of inner Yemen, whose Torah, customs and manuscripts the outside world scarcely knew. The fruit was Even Sapir (5624–5626), his great travel account — Yemen and its kehillot, the Bnei Yisrael of India, among the first reports on the Jews of Ethiopia, and pioneering studies of manuscripts including the Keter Aram Tzova. He was the first to recognize and publicize the significance of the ancient genizah of Cairo, whose treasures scholars began to seek in the wake of his words. When a false messiah arose in Yemen he wrote his Iggeret Teiman — titled after the Rambam‘s — to warn its Jews, and in his last years helped print, with his own introduction, the Chemdat Yamim of Rav Shalom Shabazi, the great paytan of Yemen.

His testimony earned lasting halachic weight: Rav Yitzchak Isaac Herzog wrote of him, “The words of Rav Yaakov Sapir are trusted by me… for he was great in Torah and yirah, and greatly esteemed by the geonim of Yerushalayim.” He was niftar in Yerushalayim and rests on Har HaZeitim; the moshav Even Sapir in the hills of Yerushalayim carries his name.