Biography
Rabbi Avraham Azulai (5330/1570 – 24 Cheshvan 5404/1643) was a mekubal and posek, and the great-grandfather of the Chida. He was born to Mordechai Azulai in Fez in Morocco, into a family whose origin was by tradition in Castile. About 5366/1606, after troubles that came upon the Jews of Fez from their neighbors together with famine and plague, he resolved to go up to Eretz Yisrael. On the way his ship went down with his writings aboard and he was saved; in thanks he took from then on to drawing his signature in the shape of a ship, and his descendants after him did the same for several generations, the Chida among them.
He settled in Chevron on his arrival. In 5379/1619 he was forced to leave the city for Yerushalayim because of a plague that broke out there, and when the plague reached Yerushalayim as well he left and lived for a short while in the region of Chevron, where he vowed that if he merited to return to his city he would publish there the chiddushei Torah he had written over the years. Relief came from elsewhere: the plague ceased in Gaza, and on 19 Av of that year he moved there for a time and wrote his sefarim Chesed L’Avraham — so named to recall the kindness of Hashem in delivering him — and Baalei Berit Avram. Rabbi Yisrael Najara was then serving as rav of the Jewish community of Gaza and wrote a short poem in honor of one of his sefarim. When the plague ended he returned to Chevron and spent the rest of his life there.
He learned kabbalah from Rabbi Chaim Vital and from his son Rabbi Shmuel Vital, and was much influenced by the kabbalah of the Ramak as well. In Chevron he wrote a commentary on the Zohar under the name Kiryat Arba. Chesed L’Avraham was printed after his passing at Amsterdam in 1685; it opens with an introduction called Even HaShetiyah and is divided into seven “springs,” each subdivided into a number of “streams.” In his sefarim he writes again and again of the spiritual worth of dwelling in Eretz Yisrael and in Chevron in particular. He was buried in the old cemetery of Chevron.
Where traditions differ. Some hold he was niftar on 21 Cheshvan rather than 24. ; The English and Hebrew sources differ on the year of his aliyah, giving 1599 and about 1606. ; A well-known account of his passing, involving the sword of a pasha fallen into the Meoras HaMachpelah, is brought in Zichron Yerushalayim; the Chida does not bring it in his works.
רבי אברהם אזולאי היה מקובל ופוסק, סב סבו של החיד"א.
Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai was a Kabbalistic author and commentator born in Fez, Morocco. In 1599 he moved to Ottoman Palestine and settled in Hebron.
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