Chaim Joseph David Azulai
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Rabbi Chaim Joseph David ben Isaac Zerachia Azulai (1724 – 21 March 1807), commonly known as the Chida (by the acronym of his name), was a rabbinical scholar and a noted bibliophile, who pioneered the history of Jewish religious writings.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in Jerusalem, where he received his education from some local prominent scholars. He was the scion of a prominent rabbinic family, the grandson of Rabbi Abraham Azulai. His main teachers were Isaac ha-Kohen Rapoport, Jonah Nabon, and Chaim ibn Attar (the Ohr ha-Chaim). At an early age he showed proficiency in Talmud, Kabbalah, and Jewish history.
In 1755, he was - on the basis of his scholarship - elected to become an emissary (shaliach) for the small Jewish community in the Land of Israel, and he would travel around Europe extensively, making an impression in every Jewish community that he visited. According to some records, he left the Land of Israel three times (1755, 1770, and 1781), living in Hebron in the meantime. His travels took him to Western Europe, North Africa, and - according to legend - to Lithuania, where he met the Vilna Gaon. Wherever he went, he would examine collections of manuscripts of rabbinic literature, which he later documented in his Shem ha-Gedolim.
He settled in the 1770s in Livorno, Italy, where most his works were published, and died there. He had been married twice; he had two sons by the names of Abraham and Raphael Isaiah Azulai.
[edit] His early scholarship
While in general a type of the Oriental rabbi of his age, a strict Talmudist, and a believer in the Kabbalah, his studious habits and exceptional memory awakened in him an interest in the history of rabbinical literature.
He accordingly began at an early age a compilation of passages in rabbinical literature in which dialectic authors had tried to solve questions that were based on chronological errors. This compilation he called העלם דבר (Some Oversights); it was never printed.
Azulai's scholarship made him so famous that in 1755 he was chosen as meshulach, (emissary), an honor bestowed on such men only as were, by their learning, well fitted to represent the Holy Land in Europe, where the people looked upon a Palestinian rabbi as a model of learning and piety.
In 1755 he was in Germany, in 1764 in Egypt, and in 1773 in Tunis, Morocco, and Italy, in which latter country he seems to have remained until 1777, most probably occupied with the printing of the first part of his biographical dictionary, Shem ha-Gedolim, (Livorno, 1774), and with his notes on the Shulchan Aruch, entitled Birke Yosef, (Livorno, 1774-76). In 1777 he was in France, and in 1778 in Holland.
On October 28 of the latter year he married, in Pisa, his second wife, Rachel; his first wife, Sarah, had died in 1773. Noting this event in his diary, he adds the wish that he may be permitted to return to Palestine. This wish seems not to have been realized. At all events he remained in Leghorn (Livorno), occupied with the publication of his works.
Azulai's literary activity is of an astonishing breadth. It embraces every department of rabbinical literature: exegesis, homiletics, casuistry, Kabbalah, liturgics, and literary history. The last is, as has already been stated, the only department in which he was original. A voracious reader, he noted all historical references; and on his travels he visited the famous libraries of Italy and France, where he examined the Hebrew manuscripts.
[edit] His works
As a writer Azulai was most prolific. The list of his works, compiled by Isaac Benjacob, runs to seventy-one items; but some are named twice, because they have two titles, and some are only small treatises. The veneration bestowed upon him by his contemporaries was that given to a saint. He reports in his diary that when he learned in Tunis of the death of his first wife, he kept it secret, because the people would have forced him to marry at once. Legends printed in the appendix to his diary, and others found in Walden's Shem ha-Gedolim he-Ḥadash (compare also Ma'aseh Nora, pp. 7-16, Podgorica, 1899), prove the great respect in which he was held. Many of his works are still extant and studied today. His scope was exceptionally wide, from halakha (Birkei Yosef) and Midrash to his main historical work Shem ha-Gedolim. Despite his Sephardi heritage, he appears to have been particularly fond of the Chassidei Ashkenaz (a group Medieval German rabbis, notably Judah the Chassid).
[edit] His Shem ha-Gedolim
His notes were published in four booklets, comprising two sections, under the titles Shem ha-Gedolim (The Name of the Great Ones), containing the names of authors, and Wa'ad la-Ḥakamim (Assembly of the Wise), containing the titles of works. They were, however, so unsystematically arranged that the mass of facts contained therein was of little value until Benjacob, in 1852, published the work systematically arranged, with copious cross-references. This treatise has established for Azulai a lasting place in Jewish literature. It contains data that might otherwise have been lost, and it proves the author to have had a critical mind, except when touching cabalistic doctrines. By sound scientific methods he investigated the question of the genuineness of Rashi's commentary to Chronicles or to some Talmudic treatise (see "Rashi," in Shem ha-Gedolim). Nevertheless he firmly believed that Chaim Vital had drunk water from Miriam's well, and that this fact enabled him to receive, in less than two years, the whole Kabbalah from the lips of Isaac Luria (see "Ḥayyim Vital," in Shem ha-Gedolim). Azulai often records where he has seen in person which versions of certain manuscripts were extant.
[edit] His "Superstition"
The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia comments strongly on Azulai's perceived 'superstitions', by which they refer to a number of Kabbalistic practices advocated by him. ("The amount of blind superstition found in his diary and other works is almost incredible in a man of such admirable critical ability; and his liturgical works have greatly helped to make this superstition general"). The Jewish Encyclopedia also claims that: "Instances of this kind are found on every page of his Ḥomat Anak (Wall Made by a Plumb-Line; Amos vii.7) and in his commentary to the Psalms, entitled Yosef Tehillot (To Add Praise), Leghorn, 1794."
[edit] Bibliography
A complete bibliographical list of his works is found in the preface to Benjacob's edition of Shem ha-Gedolim, Vilna, 1852, and frequently reprinted;
- Carmoly, in the edition of Shem ha-Gedolim, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1843;
- Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, p. 342;
- Hazan, Hama'alot li-Shelomoh, Alexandria, 1894;
- Walden, Shem ha-Gedolim he-Ḥadash, 1879;
- and the diary Ma'agal Ṭob, edited by Elijah Benamozegh, Leghorn, 1879;
- Michael, Or ha-Ḥayyim, No. 868.
[edit] See also
[edit] External link
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.
