Rav Yosef Messas הרב יוסף משאש
Rabbi of Tlemcen and chief rabbi of Haifa; Moroccan halakhah set down in letters
He was born in Meknes to a family of rabbis, took the rabbinate of Tlemcen in Algeria early, and afterwards returned to Meknes as head of the court. After Moroccan Jewry moved, he went up to the Land of Israel and in 5724 became chief rabbi of Haifa.
He wrote always and about everything: answers on questions of law, letters about what he saw, descriptions of customs, readings of the community's old records. Otzar HaMichtavim is thousands of letters, and together they give what no code of law gives: how the life of a community looked from within, with its prices, quarrels, weddings and droughts.
He was of those who held the Moroccan custom not as an antiquity but as living law, and argued with those who hurried to replace it with a common one. The exact Hebrew date of his birth is not recorded; the year from Creation is derived from the common-era year.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Otzar HaMichtavim and Mayim Chayim — his own letters and responsa
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Meknes, Tlemcen and Haifa
Basis: documents and evidence.