שלום שבזי

Rav Shalom Shabazi (5379/1619–c. 5480/1720), called by the Jews of Yemen Abba Shalom Shabazi, was the foremost chacham and poet of Yemenite Jewry, known in English sources as Salem al-Shabazi. He was born in the village of Najd al-Walid, near Ta’izz, to Rav Yosef of the Mashta family, and traced his descent from Zerach son of Yehudah; when he moved to the settlement of Shabaz, the name al-Shabazi was added to him. His father was niftar when he was fifteen, and he left home to support the family, earning his bread from weaving. He would travel to Sanaa, the capital, to learn with the chachamim of the city, and his friendship with Rav Saadia Dharyan, the head of the rabbanim of Sanaa, was well known. Outside Ta’izz, beneath Jebel Sabir, he built a house of tefillah and a mikveh.

He wrote mostly shirei kodesh on the bond between Klal Yisrael and the Ribbono shel Olam, along with riddle-poems in Torah for his friends among the rabbanim, and in all of them a hint or a mussar lesson lies hidden. He composed in Hebrew, in Aramaic and in Judeo-Arabic, and many songs join the languages together; like the poets of Sefarad in the golden age he wrote in the Spanish meter, and his verse is steeped in the Torah of Kabbalah. Of the many poems attributed to him only a portion survived the persecutions and the absence of printing presses in Yemen. His Diwan of roughly 550 poems waited until 5737/1977 to reach print, when the Ben-Zvi Institute brought it out.

His Torah is set out mainly in Chemdat Yamim, his commentary on the Torah in the way of PaRDeS — midrashic and allegorical in the manner of the chachamim of Yemen before him, with the kabbalistic understanding added in full measure. He also wrote a halachic commentary on hilchot shechitah in the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, a commentary on the haftarot, and Sefer HaMargalit on practical Kabbalah. His generation lived through the Decree of the Headgear in 5427/1667 and the Exile of Mawza in 5439/1679, when the Jews of every city and town in Yemen were driven out to a desert place in which a fifth of the exiles perished; Rav Shalom was among the expelled, and wrote a kinah for Tisha B’Av recalling it.

He was niftar in Shevat and buried in Ta’izz, at the foot of Jabal Sabir, and his kever became a place of tefillah for Jews and for Muslims alike, above all for those seeking healing. His piyutim never left the mouths of Yemenite Jewry: Elokim Eshala was the first Hebrew song broadcast on the air, in 5696/1936, and Im Nin’alu spread through the singing of Ofra Haza. In 5768 the Ohalei Tzaddikim organization restored the matzeivah over his kever; beside it stand a mikveh and a beit knesset holding a sefer Torah written in his own hand.