יחיא צאלח

Rav Yichya ben Yosef Tzalach (Cheshvan 5474/1713–28 Nisan 5565/1805), known across Yemen by the acronym Maharitz and in English sources as Yihya Salih, was among the greatest masters of halacha that Yemenite Jewry has known and the Rav Av Beit Din of the great beit din in Sana’a. He was born in the Qa’a al-Yahud quarter of Sana’a to Mari Yosef Tzalach, son of the dayan Mari Tzalach — a survivor of the Mawza Exile who founded the Tzalach shul in Sana’a and served the city as judge and shochet. He learned by his grandfather and by the elders Mari Yichya Kirwani and Mari Saadia Kati’i, and when he grew he was a talmid-chaver to Mari David Mishriki (5456/1696–5531/1771), author of Shtilei Zeitim on the Shulchan Aruch, and to Mari Yichya HaKohen Iraqi. For a livelihood he worked as a silversmith — the way of the rabbanim of Yemen, who earned their own bread and did not cast themselves upon the public — and in his thirtieth year he left the craft for the writing of sifrei Torah and megillot, work he held to be cleaner.

In 5516/1756 he was appointed Rav Av Beit Din, the sixth to head the standing court of Sana’a, and he stood at the head of the great yeshiva there, where the rabbanim of the city gathered each day to weigh questions of halacha; his authority was accepted throughout Yemen without challenge. He kept a low profile through the persecution of 5521/1761, in which twelve of the fourteen shuls of Sana’a were pulled down by order of the king al-Mahdi Abbas. He corresponded with the Chida, Rav Chaim Yosef David Azulai, in the years the Chida lived in Egypt, and a teshuvah the Chida addressed to him is printed in his Etz Chayim.

In psak he at first ruled according to the Shulchan Aruch, and afterward concluded that this was not the way of Yemenite Jewry and ruled in the main like the Rambam — drawn after the elders Mari Yehudah al-Tza’adi and Mari Pinchas Iraqi HaKohen, who decreed that a man may not change the customs of his fathers, established by the words of the Geonim of old and by the Composition the Rambam left after them. The crown of his writing is Pe’ulat Tzadik, responsa in three parts that circle every corner of halacha in short, well-aimed sentences; beside it stands Etz Chayim, a wide commentary on the Tiklal, the Yemenite Baladi-rite siddur, written out of his zeal for the old Yemenite mesorah — upholding practices such as the single Mussaf of Rosh Hashanah — while admitting measured elements from the sifrei mekubalim and the Shulchan Aruch.

In 5539 (1779) he sent his Zevach Todah, on shechitah and treifot, to Calcutta to be printed; he also left Chelek HaDikduk on the vowels and trop of biblical texts, Sha’arei Taharah on the laws of niddah in Arabic for women, Sha’arei Kedushah, Me’il Katan, and Orach LaChayim on the five megillot. Rav Yaakov Sapir, who reached Yemen some fifty years after his passing, wrote in Even Sapir that he was great in the wisdom of kabbalah and a swift, skilled sofer whose sifrei Torah were a delight to the eye, and that all Yemen walked by the light of his rulings. Among his talmidim were Mari Yosef Kara and his son Mari Avraham, who took his place as Av Beit Din; Rav Yitzchak Ratzabi holds himself a continuer of his path and opened Machon Netivot Maharitz in his name.