Person · 5548–5628 AM · 1788 CE — 1868 CE
Rabbi Chaim Palagi רבי חיים פלאג'י
the hakham bashi of Izmir and eighty books
An Izmir man, third generation of rabbis. To the Damascus affair of 1840 he answered with a treatise; correspondence tied him to Montefiore, then travelling to save the Damascus prisoners. His sons Avraham and Yitzchak took the seat one after the other.
His Kaf haChaim is its own book—not the Kaf haChaim of Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer, who stands on this ribbon; the namesakes are books, not men. In the Sephardi world Palagi's word weighs to this day: the Ben Ish Chai leans on him, and so do the poskim of our own time.
On the timeline
Places
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Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The works of Rabbi Chaim Palagi, some eighty — the halakhah and musar of nineteenth-century Izmir
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the Tanzimat firman, the Damascus affair and the sons who succeeded him
Basis: Talmud and midrash.