הרב בן ציון אבא שאול

Rav Ben Zion Abba Shaul (29 Tammuz 5684/1924–19 Tammuz 5758/1998), the Or LeTzion, was rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef in Yerushalayim and among the greatest Sephardi poskim of the generation. Born in Yerushalayim to Rav Eliyahu, an oleh from Persia — a shoemaker, talmid chacham and mekubal who served fifty years as gabbai of the Ohel Rachel shul — he was the eldest son of sixteen children raised in poverty and in uncompromising devotion to Torah. At eleven he entered Porat Yosef, where his first teacher was Rav Yehuda Tzadka and his classmates included Rav Ovadia Yosef and Rav Mordechai Eliyahu; he rose to the shiur of the rosh yeshiva, Rav Ezra Attiya, and became his talmid muvhak, receiving from him his exacting derech: to stand on every word of the sugya, Rashi, Tosafot and Rambam, until it yielded.

His mastery became legend early: at twenty, chosen to be tested by the visiting Rav Eliezer Silver before a philanthropist, he answered a difficult question in Taharot — and Rav Silver exclaimed that he had asked the same question of Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk forty years earlier, and received the same answer. He reviewed each sugya dozens of times until most of Shas and poskim were in his heart. After marrying Hadassah, daughter of Rav Yosef Shaharbani, he taught in the yeshiva’s talmud torah and rose to stand at the head of Porat Yosef beside Rav Yehuda Tzadka, his daily shiurim running four hours. Childless for many years, he pressed the Chazon Ish and the Belzer Rebbe for berachot and would not leave without them — and their fruit was his only son, Rav Eliyahu; in later years he himself became famed as a source of berachot that were fulfilled, and Jews of every community streamed to his door.

His psak follows the derech of the Chida and the Ben Ish Chai, with great weight given to the Chazon Ish, and is gathered in the Or LeTzion volumes — responsa on the four chelkei Shulchan Aruch, chiddushim on the masechtot, and the mussar volumes Chochmah U’Mussar — which stand at the center of Sephardi psak today. Struck by illness in 5743 moments after eulogizing Rav Yaakov Mutzafi, he carried on teaching through fifteen years of weakness. He was niftar on 19 Tammuz 5758 and rests in Sanhedria; his talmidim — among them Rav Reuven Elbaz — and the Yeshivat Or LeTzion founded with his son carry his Torah on.