שמואל ויטאל

Rav Shmuel Vital (5358/1598–10 Adar II 5437/1677) was a rav and mekubal of Damascus, the son of Rav Chaim Vital — the foremost talmid of the Arizal — and the faithful steward of the treasure his father left. Born in Damascus, he married the daughter of Rav Yeshaya Pinto, the city’s rav, and grew into one of its chachamim.

His immortal service to the hidden Torah is the Shemoneh She’arim: from his father’s writings he arranged the teachings of the Arizal into eight ordered gates — the redaction that became the authoritative text of the Kitvei Ari for the mekubalim of the Sephardi world, learned and printed to this day. Through his hands, more than any others, the Torah of the Arizal passed in order to the generations. He taught the hidden wisdom to talmidim including Rav Yaakov Tzemach, himself a great transcriber of the Ari’s Torah.

In his later years he moved to Egypt, where he was placed at the head of the society Tikkunei HaTeshuvah and where he was niftar. He was a posek and darshan as well as a mekubal: his responsa were printed as Be’er Mayim Chaim, and among his other works — many lost, as he himself testified — are Totze’ot Chaim on Rashi on the Torah, Chochmat Nashim on the halachot of gittin and yibum, the derashot Mekor Chaim, and the siddur Chemdat Yisrael, printed from manuscript in recent generations.