Person · 5689–5770 AM · 1929 CE — 2010 CE
Rav Mordechai Eliyahu רבי מרדכי צמח אליהו
the Rishon leZion who kept the Baghdad custom in Jerusalem
Born in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1929; he studied at Porat Yosef under Rav Ezra Attia and was close to the Chazon Ish and to the kabbalists—Mordechai Sharabi, Yitzchak Kaduri. He began as a judge in Beer Sheva and became a dayyan of the Supreme Rabbinical Court.
One thing both bound him to Rav Ovadia Yosef and divided them: both grew out of Baghdad learning, but Ovadia built a single Sephardi practice on the Shulchan Aruch, while Eliyahu held the custom of the fathers—by the Ben Ish Chai. That argument of two schools is alive now.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The siddur Kol Eliyahu and the responsa — the Iraqi custom as living practice
Scholarship
- The standard rabbinic reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Porat Yosef, the office of Rishon leZion
Basis: Talmud and midrash.