From His Own Pocket

But for all his intellectual prowess, Rav Attiya’s students loved him for his heart as much as his head, knowing he was dedicated to their spiritual development at all costs — even if it meant taking from his own meager pocket. In the early days of Porat Yosef, most Sephardic boys went to work after bar mitzvah to help support their families — who had money for the luxury of yeshivah learning? But Rav Ezra did whatever it took to enable boys to continue learning into their teens, often underwriting the cost of their education by deducting funds from his own paltry salary.

The most famous of these impoverished teenagers what none other than Rav Ovadiah Yosef. Once, after the bochur Ovadiah, a budding young scholar, hadn’t shown up to yeshivah for a few days, Rav Ezra discovered that Ovadiah had taken a job helping his father in his struggling grocery store due to the family’s extreme poverty. Rav Attiya’s pleas to the boy’s father fell on deaf ears — the family’s survival, he said, depended on his son. Rav Attiya approached the father again, this time telling him that he’d found someone to take Ovadiah’s place for free, so that the teenage talmid chacham could return to the beis medrash. The next day at the crack of dawn, Rav Attiya himself appeared at the grocery wearing a work apron. Needless to say, when his father saw just how much this holy sage was willing to sacrifice for his bochur’s Torah study, he let Ovadiah return to yeshivah.

Rav David pauses, going back to the time of his own financially impoverished childhood in pre-state Eretz Yisrael. “Back then, everyone struggled for bread, but for Torah scholars the situation was really desperate — yet no one complained and it didn’t stop them from making great spiritual strides,” Rav David says. “Nowadays, when I meet bnei Torah who complain that it’s hard for them to learn, I tell them that not so many years back, my father, like the rest of the Torah scholars in Jerusalem, rose to great heights under financial strains that were incomparably more difficult.

“We were seven children,” Rav David continues, “and we were always very poor. The days my father would receive his salary from yeshivah, needy people would wait for him on his way home. He would give away half his salary before he even got through the door — and that was after some of it had already been deducted in order to pay tuition for poor bochurim.”

A Sefer and a Bench

Rav Ezra Attiya was born on Tu B’Shevat 5645 (January 1885) in Aleppo (Aram Tzova), Syria. His parents had lost several children in infancy, and before his birth they traveled to the gravesite of Ezra Hasofer in nearby Tadif, praying that if the child they were expecting was a boy, they would name him Ezra and make sure he’d dedicate his life to Torah.

Ezra was just a child when the rabbanim of Aleppo told his father of his son’s exceptional talents. When he was 11, his melamed informed his father that he’d outgrown his learning environment, that he needed a new place where he could make significant strides in Torah.

“I think that’s when my father’s derech halimud was formulated,” Rav David says. “After he acquired the study of Mishnah, he turned to Gemara. His father took him to learn with a relative, Chacham Yehudah Aslan Attiya. My father would tell me how they sat down at the side of a beis medrash that was filled with tremendous scholars, how Rabbi Yehudah took out a Maseches Kesubos and began to teach him the perek of Eilu Ne’aros. He taught my father the fundamentals of Gemara study in iyun and bekius, and decades later, Abba still talked about the sheer delight in discovering the secret of how to really learn Talmud.”

A few months later, Rabbi Yehudah Aslan told young Ezra’s father that the boy could already begin learning on his own, and so his father found him a chavrusa — a talented bochur named Matlov Shaul Abadi. The two became inseparable, often skipping meals to learn and generally being the last ones out of the beis medrash — where one small kerosene flame continued to burn for them.

In time, they parted ways. Years later Rav Ezra became a mainstay of the Sephardic Torah world in Eretz Yisrael while Rav Matlov Abadi moved to New York, where he headed the Aram Tzova expatriate community. But even while separated by thousands of miles, there was always a special corner in Rav Matlov’s heart for the chavrusa who had learned with him in his youth and who became a gadol hador. Years later, after both had passed away within a few months of each other, they were buried side by side on Har Hamenuchos.

After Ezra’s bar mitzvah, the family immigrated to Jerusalem and settled in the Old City, where he discovered Yeshivas Toras Chaim on Hagai Street, and its assortment of young and old Torah scholars toiling side by side in learning. On one of the benches he met a young, brilliant bochur named Yitzchak Ades, the son of the mekubal Rabbi Avraham Chaim Ades. The two soon sat down to learn b’chavrusa.

“My father later said that the learning in Toras Chaim was a lifesaver for him,” Rav David relates.

Because soon afterward, Ezra’s father died suddenly, leaving a destitute widow and two orphans — Ezra and his brother Eliyahu. While his mother hired herself out for domestic work, young Ezra had to figure out how he could devote himself to Torah study. And so he found a bench in a small beis medrash where he learned, davened, and slept — and covered vast amounts of Talmud with commentaries and poskim. He sustained himself with one nightly meal — a dry pita with a little salt. Occasionally, his mother would bring her beloved son an egg, which he would slice in half and share with her.

In 1907, Rav Ezra moved over to a new yeshivah called Ohel Moed, where he was asked to join its staff along with Rosh Yeshivah Rav Raphael Shlomo Laniado and Rav Yosef Yedid Halevi, one of the great rabbanim of Jerusalem of that era, with whom he learned b’chavrusa.

Two years later, Rav Ezra married Bolissa Salem, daughter of the mekubal Rav Avraham Salem. In 1911, their first son was born, but died in infancy.

Escape to Egypt

Then, in 1914, the Jews of Eretz Yisrael — ruled at the time by the Ottoman Empire — found themselves unwitting participants in World War I, where there was a general mobilization for the Turkish army and all able-bodied men were snatched off the streets.

During the first year, the decree bypassed the Torah scholars of Jerusalem, after the Chacham Bashi from Constantinople and Chacham Nissim Danon of Jerusalem reached an arrangement that the Torah scholars would receive an exemption. But that exemption was only valid for one year. The following year the authorities refused to honor the exemptions and the threat of conscription hovered over the heads of every talmid chacham. It was no simple matter — a draft evader who was caught was automatically taken to the guillotine at the Damascus Gate, then hanged in public to serve as a deterrent for others.

Rav Avraham Chaim Ades managed to smuggle Rav Ezra to Egypt using a forged Russian passport, which at that time didn’t require a photograph. While for Rav Ezra it meant being a refugee, it turned out to be a boon for the Jews of Egypt.

At the time, Torah scholarship in Egypt had become particularly weak, and the few talmidei chachamim of Cairo were thrilled that someone of Rav Ezra’s caliber had joined their ranks. At their behest, he gave shiurim to the older men and to the youth, whose religious observance had become weakened due to a lack of solid education on one hand, and the lure of the outside on the other.

Rav David says his father created a veritable religious revolution in Cairo. “He would begin teaching Gemara to the youths with Maseches Avodah Zarah — not a first choice when beginning the study of Gemara. But he once explained it to me like this: ‘I knew that this was the masechta that the youngsters of Cairo needed at that time. It was important to teach the youths the issurim of bishul akum and related issues in order to save them from assimilating with the non-Jews.’

“My father told me that the youths would share what they learned with their families, and this affected a silent revolution of greater mitzvah observance. They would tell their parents things like not to put a liquid dish on the primus on Shabbat, and that livers have to be halachically roasted on all sides before being fried.”

One day, a son was born to one of the young talmidei chachamim affiliated with Keter Torah where Rav Ezra gave his shiurim, and Rav Ezra asked the administrative committee if, given the circumstances, they could increase the young man’s monthly stipend.

“We are sorry, Chacham,” the committee head spread his hands helplessly. “If we increase the stipend for him we’ll have to raise it for all, and we cannot afford that.…”

“Maybe you can raise it just a bit,” Rav Ezra pleaded for the bread of the young children. He knew the young man well and was aware of the extent of his poverty. Now, with a new baby, how would he feed them all?

“We just can’t do it,” the committee head said regretfully.

“If so,” Rav Ezra declared, “then please reduce my salary by one lira and give it to him.”

“Is that what the Chacham wants? Your own salary barely covers your basic needs!”

“I see the struggle of a talmid chacham and must help him,” Rav Ezra replied.

When the committee head saw how determined the Rav was, he instructed the secretary to add a lira to the avreich’s monthly stipend from the account of Rav Ezra’s.

“At the end of that month,” Rav David recounts, “the committee head went over the list of the salaries and discovered that while the secretary had added a lira to the needy avreich, he had mistakenly also added a lira to my father’s salary instead of deducting it. Instead of being upset, the committee head came to Abba, smiling from ear to ear, and said, ‘It must be from Shamayim. I’m leaving the increased lira for both of you.’ ”

The paradox, says Rav David, is that the years of spiritual flourishing in Egypt came at a time when a bloody war was ravaging the rest of the world. “Abba had to force himself to disconnect with everything happening in the world so that the thoughts, the worry, and the fear that could have driven him out of his mind should not disturb his learning. At night, when he was poring over his Gemara, he would try to banish thoughts of his family: his wife Bolissa and infant son, his widowed mother, his brother and other relatives who were left behind.

His worry was not misplaced. A typhus epidemic that swept through the region didn’t bypass his family, and during those years, Rav Ezra lost his mother, his brother Eliyahu and Eliyahu’s wife Simcha, and Rabbanit Bolissa’s sister.

When the war finally ended in 1918, the 400-year-old Ottoman Empire was vanquished by Britain and Rabbanit Attiya decided to join her husband in Egypt with their son. While they were there, a second son was born. The family returned to Jerusalem in 1922.

Torah under Fire

Rav Ezra’s influence in Egypt didn’t escape the attention of the rabbanim in Eretz Yisrael, and a year after his return, he was approached by Rav Raphael Shlomo Laniado, Rosh Yeshivas Porat Yosef — who knew him from his days in Ohel Moed — and asked that he serve alongside him as mashgiach. 

In 5685/1925, two years after the yeshivah opened, Rav Laniado suddenly fell ill. He was not yet 50, and his passing stunned everyone, yet as soon as the shivah was over, the hanhalah of the yeshivah gathered and unanimously chose Rav Ezra Attiya to serve as rosh yeshivah. Now his task would be to mold the image of the yeshivah for generations to come.

He was just 38 at the time, but his path was clear. He wanted to create a new kind of beis medrash, a place of Torah where every person could advance in their learning, and no less importantly, a place that could give rise to the future leaders of Am Yisrael.

Rav Ezra was personally involved with every student in his yeshivah, testing all the younger boys himself, giving a daily shiur to the older boys and a nightly shiur to the married men, and delivering a weekly mussar lecture to the entire yeshivah. He also developed a special Sephardic approach to mussar, always carried a copy of the mussar classic Chovos Halevavos, and strongly advised his students to do the same. In fact, he instructed every class in the yeshivah to begin each day with a short mussar lesson.

And in the end, he fulfilled his goal of training Sephardic Torah scholars who could build Sephardic communities all over the world. His students were the manhigim of Sephardic Jewry in Israel, the US, Europe, and South America.

Yet his tenure as rosh yeshivah wasn’t immune to the political upheaval in Eretz Yisrael at the time. When the Arab riots of 1929 cut off access to the yeshivah building in the Old City, Rav Ezra moved classes to several shuls in the new part of the city and appointed advanced students to be in charge of these groups, while he personally supervised every location — a situation that lasted nearly a decade. For several years the yeshivah returned to its original location, but then during the 1948 War of Independence when the Old City was overrun, the yeshivah building was burned to the ground by Jordanian troops, and thousands of pages of Rav Ezra’s writings were destroyed along with it. He consoled himself with the thought that they were not meant for publication — instead, his many venerated students would be the inheritance he’d leave to the world. (In the mid-1950s, Yeshivat Porat Yosef and the Gerrer community jointly purchased a plot of land in the Geula neighborhood, where both the yeshivah and the Gerrer beis medrash were built. After the 1967 Six Day War, the building in the Old City was reconstructed, and the yeshivah began to run two parallel campuses.)

As an across-the-board leader of all Sephardic kehillos and a gaon in Torah with a widespread reputation and thousands of talmidim, Rav Ezra Attiya was asked to join the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudas Yisrael, where he served from 1944 until his passing in 1970 — the only Sephardic leader to serve on the Agudah’s Moetzes.

During that tenure, the Steipler Gaon often sent him questions regarding matters of public concern, knowing that the Rosh Yeshivah analyzed everything with a broad Torah outlook and an acute awareness of the public responsibility he carried on his shoulders.

The gedolim of the era didn’t just honor him for his Torah accomplishments, though. They knew his mitzvah observance was impeccable as well.

“In his later years, as per the recommendations of his doctors, my parents would often travel to Tel Aviv where they stayed in a room near the water — the sea air made it easier for Abba to breathe. In Tel Aviv in those days there was a large chareidi community but my father never ate anything not cooked in his home,” Rav David recalls. “So my mother would prepare for these journeys a long time in advance and brought the food for their entire stay. It was quite an effort, because there were no refrigerators at the time and the food was stored in an icebox.

“Many gedolei Torah relied on my mother,” Rav David continues. “Rav Yitzchak Nissim wouldn’t eat outside his home and wouldn’t even drink a cup of water outside the house, lest the cup was not toiveled, and he only ate chicken that he alone had kashered. But once there was a pidyon haben for a mutual relative of ours and Ima cooked the meal — and Rav Nissim sat down and ate a full seudah, saying it was the only time in his life that he ate outside the house, and that only in the home of Chacham Ezra Attiya could one eat without worry.”

Holding Their Hand

Rav Ezra was certainly devoted to the spiritual state of his students, but as rosh yeshivah, he viewed himself not only as a teacher, but as a father to the bochurim throughout the years of poverty and wont.

Rav David remembers how his father would always ask the bochurim if they had eaten enough. “He would ask, ‘Did you eat your fill today? Did you eat an egg already? You should also eat butter so you should have energy to learn,’ he would tell a talmid who looked pale.

“His personal, loving attention to his talmidim was manifested at every opportunity, especially when they came to learn with him at home. When they finished learning, my father would get up from his seat and escort them out the door to the street, even when he was elderly and it was hard for him to walk. It didn’t matter if it was a serious avreich or a young teenager who had just joined the yeshivah.

“You saw his greatness where you saw his humility,” says Rav David. “When someone told him that he didn’t have to put himself out to escort young students, he would just wave away the comment with a smile.”

And then there was the trademark handclasp. “When Abba would speak to talmidim or other rabbanim, he would place his hand in theirs as a sign of fondness and admiration,” says Rav David. “Even if it was a young bochur, he would hold his hand when learning and when they walked together in the street. That’s why they accepted mussar from him. Because they knew he loved them unconditionally.”

Many avreichim who learned in the yeshivah would receive additional monetary support from Rav Ezra personally, and often, Rav David was his shaliach. “I remember how Abba would send me to the home a poor Torah scholar, a new immigrant, and told me to give him two liras, a huge sum in those days, so the man could buy butter and sour cream to strengthen himself. ‘Give him the money under cover,’ he would instruct me, ‘because if others see that I’m supporting him they’ll think they’re exempt from the mitzvah themselves. But he’s so poor he needs every grush.’ ”

In the last year of Rav Ezra’s life, when the Rosh Yeshivah was already bedridden and in and out of consciousness, the neighborhood grocer approached Rav David and told him that his father had accumulated an enormous debt that had not yet been paid. Rav David was surprised, because in their home, nothing was ever bought on credit. The grocer explained that Rav Ezra had directed him to provide food for the family of a destitute talmid chacham, and that the money would be forthcoming. But when Rav David mentioned the matter to his father, Rav Ezra became greatly agitated that his secret had become known — begging his son not to discuss the matter with anyone, and telling him where in the house the money to pay the grocer was hidden.

This same generosity of spirit, this feeling of responsibility for the klal, manifested itself throughout the decades in both outside community service and within the walls of the yeshivah. It was known, for example, that Rav Ezra Attiya never rejected a student. Anyone who knocked on the door of Yeshivat Porat Yosef and asked to come and learn was tested, and if he had the potential to be a ben yeshivah, he was accepted, even when the financial situation in the yeshivah was dire and the administrators cried that there wasn’t an extra agurah to support another student.

One day, a young immigrant from Iraq approached the Rosh Yeshivah. “I want to learn here,” he said, and so Rav Ezra tested him on a daf Gemara and was quite impressed — but the administration informed him unequivocally: “We’re sorry, we can barely sustain those who are already here. We cannot add even one more student.”

“Let’s try, nevertheless,” the Rosh Yeshivah pleaded, “because if we turn him away he will go to work, and I am sure that Am Yisrael will lose a talmid chacham. I can’t allow that to happen.”

But finances won out and the answer remained no. When the Rosh Yeshivah saw this, he turned to Rav Ben Tzion Chazan, who was also a member of the administration, and asked that his salary be reduced in order to enable the bochur to join.

“How can we do that?” Rav Ben Tzion recoiled. “The Rosh Yeshivah’s salary is so paltry as it is.” Ultimately the boy was accepted and Rav Ezra formed a partnership with Rav Ben Tzion Chazan, with both of them taking a reduced salary — even though Chacham Ben Tzion was a father of 12 children.

“This boy grew up to be a tremendous talmid chacham and marbitz Torah, and an eminent sage in Klal Yisrael,” Rav David says. “My father invested in his Torah shares, and reaped infinite dividends.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 611)