Chaim b. Moses Attar

Tomb on the Mount of Olives (Jerusalem)

Chaim b. Mose Attar ( Abenattar ; * 1696 in Salé , Morocco , † July 6, 1743 in Jerusalem ) was a Jewish scholar and Kabbalist in Morocco. His work Or ha-Chajim ("Light of Life"), a commentary on the Pentateuch , achieved fame .

Attar came from a Sephardic family and was tutored by his grandfather R. Chajim. Together with his father and grandfather, Attar moved to Meknes in 1705 , and in 1708 the family returned to Salé. He trained as a rabbi and married the learned daughter of his cousin in Salé. Attar became known for his ascetic lifestyle and had numerous students and his own teaching house. At the end of the 1730s he left Morocco due to the high taxes. After stays in Fès , Meknes and Tétouan , he came to Livorno in 1739 , where he settled for some time. He wrote his work Or ha-Chaim here and again gathered numerous students around him. In 1741 he set out with a group of 30 people, including Moroccan Jews and young Italian rabbis, by sea to Palestine. Due to epidemics in Jaffa and Jerusalem, Attar stayed for about a year in the port city of Acre , where he founded a temporary yeshiva . Finally Attar moved his school to Jerusalem and founded the Midrash Knesset Israel Yeshiva with a department for advanced and a department for young students.

literature

• Encyclopaedica Judaica. Judaism in the past and present. Volume 3, Berlin 1929
• Encyclopaedica Judaica. Jerusalem 1971–1972
• Everyman's Judaica. An encyclopedic dictionary. London 1975
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. 1, 1925.