הרב יוסף חיים מבגדד

Rav Yosef Chaim of Baghdad (Av 5595/1835–13 Elul 5669/1909), known for all generations as the Ben Ish Chai after his great work, was a mekubal, darshan, and posek, among the outstanding chachamim of Eastern Jewry. He was born to Rav Eliyahu, son of Rav Moshe Chaim who had served as rav of Baghdad; as a child of about seven he fell into a deep well while playing, and in the pit vowed that if saved he would give all his days to Torah. He began learning with his mother’s brother, Rav David Chai Meir, who later founded Yeshivat Shoshanim LeDavid in Yerushalayim; at fourteen he entered “Beit Zilka,” the beit midrash for rabbanim headed by Rav Abdallah Somech, and became his talmid muvhak. At seventeen, in 5611/1851, he married Rachel, daughter of Rav Yehuda Somech of his rebbi’s family. He lived from a business partnership with his brothers, refused all wages of rabbanut, and printed his sefarim from his own purse.

When his father was niftar in Elul 5619/1859, the young Rav Yosef Chaim gave his first derashah on 13 Elul, as the shivah ended, and from that day led the kehillah of Baghdad for fifty years — without ever holding the official seat of Chacham Bashi — every hard she’elah coming before him. Each morning after tefillat vatikin he gave an hour and a half of shiur in Shulchan Aruch, Ein Yaakov, and Chok LeYisrael; every Shabbat after Minchah he would darshen some three hours before thousands in the “Slat al-Zghiri,” weaving halachah with aggadah, meshalim, and riddles; and on four Shabbatot of the year — Shabbat Teshuvah, Zachor, HaGadol, and the Shabbat before Shavuot — tens of thousands of Baghdad’s Jews gathered in the city’s great synagogue to hear him. His influence spread over the Jews of Iraq, India, and Persia and the Sephardic kehillot of Eretz Yisrael.

In 5629/1869 he journeyed with his brother Rav Yechezkel to Eretz Yisrael. At the kever of Benayahu ben Yehoyada in the Galil he sat for days, and there, as he himself wrote, great sodot were opened to him and he knew his neshamah to be from the root of Benayahu’s — hence the names of his sefarim: Ben Ish Chai, Rav Pe’alim, Ben Yehoyada, Mekabtziel. At the tziyun of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron he composed the piyut “Vaamartem Koh LeChai,” received in all the kehillot of Yisrael. He learned with the mekubalim of Yeshivat Beit El in Yerushalayim, whose minhagim he planted among the Jews of Bavel; in Chevron he davened at Me’arat HaMachpelah and even sought to purchase it, without success. He carried home earth of Eretz Yisrael to scatter on the floor of his beit knesset, and a stone of Yerushalayim that he fixed at the head of its eastern wall. His sefarim he sent to be printed in Yerushalayim rather than in the cheaper presses of Livorno, to give parnassah to its Jews; and at his word the gvir Yosef Avraham Shalom of Calcutta gave his fortune to found Yeshivat Porat Yosef in the Old City of Yerushalayim.

He wrote more than a hundred chibburim, of which fifty-three were printed. The Ben Ish Chai — the halachot of daily life arranged on the parshiyot of the year, each parsha opening with sodot of kabbalah — became a household sefer of Sephardic Jewry, learned in Sephardic yeshivot everywhere. Beside it stand the teshuvot Rav Pe’alim and Torah Lishmah, Ben Yehoyada on the aggadot of the Shas, Qanun al-Nisa — meshalim and mussar for the women of Bavel in their own Arabic — and over two hundred piyutim. In 5668/1908 he traveled to the kever of Yechezkel HaNavi at Kfil, where he wrote Mar’ot Yechezkel; setting out for the kever again the next year, he fell ill on the way and was niftar on 13 Elul 5669/1909. His aron was carried two days back to Baghdad, and by the tradition of the elders of Bavel, the stone he had brought from Eretz Yisrael was laid beneath his head at his burial.