הרב מרדכי אליהו

Rav Mordechai Tzemach Eliyahu (21 Adar I 5689/1929–25 Sivan 5770/2010) was the Rishon LeTzion, Chief Rabbi of Israel — a posek, dayan, and mekubal who stood among the leading Sephardic chachamim of his generation. He was born in the Old City of Yerushalayim to Rav Salman Eliyahu, a mekubal who had come up from Baghdad at the word of his rebbi, the Ben Ish Chai, and to Mazal, sister of Rav Yehuda Tzadka and great-niece of the Ben Ish Chai. The home was poor, and his father was niftar when he was eleven; the boy sold chickpeas in the shuk to help his family, and, with few sefarim at home, received from Rav Ben Tzion Chazan a key to the heichal of Yeshivat Porat Yosef, where he learned alone each night. In Porat Yosef he was a talmid of Rav Ezra Attiya, and he drew close to the Chazon Ish, Rav Yitzchak Nissim, Rav Mordechai Sharabi, and the Baba Sali. As a young man he joined Brit HaKanaim, a group that fought the secularization of the young state, and served ten months in prison; in later years he said plainly that the Torah had not changed, but that this had not been the way to bring it to the generation.

Ordained a dayan from the beit midrash of Rav Yitzchak Nissim, he was charged in 5720/1960 with bringing the Chida‘s remains from Livorno to kevurah on Har HaMenuchot. That year he was appointed the youngest dayan in the country, in Beersheba; from there he rose to the Yerushalayim beit din and to the Beit Din HaGadol. In 5743/1983 he was crowned Rishon LeTzion in the Yochanan ben Zakai shul of the Old City, serving until 5753/1993 alongside Rav Avraham Shapira, with whom he worked hand in hand — raising the standards of kashrut and shechitah the world over, and traveling to schools, moshavim, and distant kehillot to bring Jews closer to Torah.

In psak he walked the path of the Ben Ish Chai and the Kaf HaChaim, weighing the Zohar and the mekubalim — the Arizal and the Rashash — beside the Shulchan Aruch, and he labored to preserve the nusach of Iraqi Jewry, publishing the siddur Kol Eliyahu. Among his sefarim are Ma’amar Mordechai, Darchei Tahara on hilchot niddah, halachah works written for Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike, and the responsa of his years as Chief Rabbi. He stood at the head of Darchei Hora’ah, which trains rabbanim and dayanim for kehillot in Eretz Yisrael and beyond, gave a weekly shiur carried by satellite to thousands, and was the spiritual guide of Jonathan Pollard, visiting him nine times in his American prison.

He was niftar on 25 Sivan 5770/2010; some hundred thousand accompanied him, and he was buried on Har HaMenuchot in the ohel of the Chida — beside the very kever he had prepared for the Chida fifty years before.