הרב דוד בן זמרא

Rav David ben Shlomo ibn Zimra (5239/1479–5333/1573), known for all generations as the Radbaz and in English sources as David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, was the leader of Egyptian Jewry for forty years and one of the great poskim of the generations after the Spanish expulsion. Born in Spain to a family of talmidei chachamim, he was thirteen when the expulsion of 5252/1492 drove his family out; they wandered to Fez, and from there to Tzfat (Safed) and Yerushalayim, and in his youth he learned under Rav Yosef Saragossi. In 5273/1513, amid the hardships pressing on Yerushalayim, he went down to Egypt, to the yeshiva and beit din of the nagid Rav Yitzchak HaKohen Sholal, and after the Ottoman conquest of 5277/1517 he rose to the leadership of Egyptian Jewry — av beit din, rosh yeshiva, gabbai tzedakah and steward of the community’s property. A successful merchant in grain and hides, he carried his rabbanut without need of the community’s purse, and the yeshiva he founded drew talmidim who became giants: Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi, author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, the Arizal, and Rav Yaakov Castro, the Maharikash.

His hand set the daily order of Egyptian Jewry aright: it was the Radbaz who abolished there the counting of years by minyan shtarot, the old Seleucid reckoning, and established the count from the creation of the world as in the other kehillot — the reckoning Jews use to this day. Among his teshuvot that later generations lean on: his ruling on the Jews of Ethiopia, and his lengthy teshuvah on Har HaBayit, identifying the rock under the dome as the even hashetiyah of the Kodesh HaKodashim.

The Radbaz wrote thousands of teshuvot, of which more than two thousand stand in print in the She’elot U’Teshuvot HaRadbaz and its companion volumes — his chief gift to the halachah. Beside them: Yekar Tiferet on the Mishneh Torah, answering the hasagot of the Ra’avad and explaining the places the Maggid Mishneh passes over, printed in the standard editions of the Rambam; Kelalei HaGemara, on the darchei halimud of the Talmud; and works of kabbalah — Magen David on the letters of the alef-beit, Metzudat David on the reasons of the 613 mitzvot in the four ways of pardes, Michtam LeDavid on Shir HaShirim al pi sod, and Keter Malchut, a tefillah that entered the seder of Yom Kippur.

After forty years at the head of Egyptian Jewry he laid down his office, divided the greater part of his wealth among the poor with special provision for talmidei chachamim, and went up to Yerushalayim around 5313/1553; from there he moved to Tzfat, where he sat on the beit din of Rav Yosef Karo, who held him in great esteem, and spent his last twenty years in learning and writing. He was niftar in Tzfat in the summer of 5333/1573 and was buried in the old cemetery; in 5776/2015 his resting place was identified beside that of the Mabit, Rav Moshe of Trani, in the chelkah of the Arizal — his talmid from Egypt.