הרב בן ציון מאיר חי עוזיאל

Rav Ben Tzion Meir Chai Uziel (5640/1880–24 Elul 5713/1953), the Rishon LeTzion, was born in Yerushalayim to Rav Yosef Raphael Uziel, head of the beit din of the city’s Sephardi community; his mother Sarah was a granddaughter of the Rishon LeTzion Rav Chaim David Chazan. He learned in Doresh Tzion and in the Tiferet Yerushalayim yeshiva; his rebbeim were Rav Menachem Bechar Yitzchak and Rav Ben Tzion Avraham Cuenca, and he grew close to Rav Yaakov Shaul Elyashar, the Yisa Beracha, who would set him to writing teshuvot. Orphaned of his father at fourteen, he divided his days between work and learning; at twenty he was teaching in Tiferet Yerushalayim, and he founded the Machazikei Torah yeshiva for young Sephardi men.

In 5671/1911 he was appointed Chacham Bashi of Yaffo and its district, serving beside Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, rav of the Ashkenazi community; the closeness between the two drew their kehillot closer together. During the First World War the Ottoman authorities exiled him to Damascus for standing up for persecuted Jews, though he was permitted to return before the war’s end. In 1921 he went out to serve three years as rav of Salonika, a kehillah of some sixty thousand Jews, and in 5683/1923 returned as rav of Tel Aviv. In 5699/1939 he was raised to Rishon LeTzion, Sephardi chief rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, and with the founding of the State in 5708/1948 he became its first Sephardi chief rabbi, serving beside Rav Yitzchak Isaac HaLevi Herzog until the end of his life. In 5700/1940 he founded Yeshivat Shaarei Tzion in Yerushalayim.

His teshuvot, Mishpetei Uziel, span the four chelkei Shulchan Aruch and take up the living questions of his generation; beside them stand Michmanei Uziel, Hegyonei Uziel in machshavah, Shaarei Uziel on the laws of the orphan and the widow, and Chiddushei Uziel on the Shas. Over his desk hung the passuk from Zechariah, “love truth and peace” — the motto of his life; he labored all his days to raise the Torah standing of the Sephardi kehillot and to draw all the communities of Yisrael toward one another. Among his talmidim were Rav Chaim David HaLevi, later rav of Tel Aviv, and Rav David Chelouche, rav of Netanya.

Two days before his passing he dictated his tzavaah — love of every Jew, peace in every Jewish home, and peace between Yisrael and their Father in Heaven — and asked that no hespedim be said over him. He was niftar as Shabbat of parashat Nitzavim-Vayelech entered, 24 Elul 5713/1953, and rests, as he asked, on Har HaMenuchot; the moshav Beit Uziel carries his name, and more than thirty volumes of his Torah have been printed from his manuscripts.