Melava Malka Stories

Chacham Yosef Chaim (Part 2)

Chacham Yosef Chaim, the great Torah sage of Baghdad, was commonly referred to by the name of his most popular book, “Ben Ish Chai.” Even though he was not the Chief Rabbi of the city, he served as a leading Rabbi there for 50 years until his passing in 1909. He was highly respected by all. His sermons attracted thousands, for he was followed by the great and the simple. What’s more, his house was always wide open to the needy and any petitioner.
Continue reading Chacham Yosef Chaim (Part 2)

Chacham Yosef Chaim

Chacham Yosef Chaim (1832-1909), known as the Ben Ish Chai, was a highly revered Torah scholar and master of Kabbalah. Based in Baghdad, Iraq, he was recognized by the Sephardic community both locally and abroad as an eminent Halachic authority.

Yosef Chaim was born on the 27^th of Av, 1832, into a long chain of rabbinic figures renowned for their spiritual influence on the Baghdad Jewish community over the centuries. His father, Chacham Eliyahu Chaim, the son of Chacham Moshe Chaim, was the head rabbi and leader of Baghdad’s Jewish community.

Rebbeitzin Shula Kazen

Since Shabbat Nachamu is my mother’s, of blessed memory, birthday, I am sharing some fascinating details of her early years growing up in Communist Russia. During her youth she upheld Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. She continued to be a staunch advocate for authentic Judaism throughout her journey in life, wherever Divine Providence took her, whether in Russia, in Poking, Germany, in Paris, France, in Cleveland, Ohio, or in Brooklyn, New York. Throughout the world many have been recipients of her wise counsel and friendship. Together with her husband, my dear father Rabbi Zalman Kazen, of blessed memory, they raised their family in Cleveland, Ohio.

Revered for her fiery personality and rock-solid faith forged during a childhood in the former Soviet Union, Rebbetzin Shula Shifra Kazen nourished, guided, and inspired thousands during decades of communal leadership in Cleveland, Ohio.

She was born in 1922 in Gomel, Belarus, then part of the newly created Soviet Union. The eldest of seven children born to Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan and Maryasha (Garelik) Shagalov, her life began under difficult circumstances. Russia had been devastated by the terrible civil war that birthed the Bolshevik revolution, and thousands were dying of starvation.

The lost money

The Chozeh of Lublin had a Chasid by the name of Reb Avraham Ponzier. This Reb Avraham had three daughters of marriageable age. In those days, the father was expected to offer a sizable dowry to marry off his daughter. Unfortunately, Reb Avraham did not have the money. His wife suggested that he should go to the Chozeh and ask what to do.

Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar in the lion’s den

While Rabbi Chaim was still a student in his grandfather’s Yeshiva he learned the skills of a goldsmith, so that he would earn his livelihood without having to make his Torah knowledge “a spade to dig with.”
Later, when he had already become famous for his learning and saintliness and could have held an honored position as a great Rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva (head of a Yeshiva), he declined to be paid for these services. He preferred to earn his money from the work of his hands, for he was a very skilled goldsmith.

Ink that doesn’t fade

The well-known Rabbi Yosef Wineberg shared an interesting experience. In 1945, when he was living in Chicago, the Previous Rebbe sent his emissary, the distinguished Chassidic rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Levitin, to Chicago on a special mission. Rabbi Levitin was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to visit and bring warmth and inspiration to the Jewish community in Chicago in general and to a certain Mr. Lisner in particular.

Rescued by the Rebbe: A Journey from Curacao to New York

I grew up in Curacao, a Caribbean Island that is part of the Netherlands Antilles. There were no Jewish schools on the island at the time, and I attended the Protestant school.

A Jewish priest

I was born and raised in Basel, Switzerland in 1937. When I was fifteen, my family moved to the Netherlands, where my father became the Chief Rabbi of the Hague. Here he opened a yeshivah for Hungarian refugees from the war. Five years later, I came to New York to enroll in the central Lubavitch yeshivah in Crown Heights.

The Hidden Generosity of a Rich Miser

In the city of Krakow, Poland, there lived a rich Jew by the name of Israel who was famous for his stinginess. The local beggars had long since given up trying to knock at his door. All attempts by the trustees of the community’s various charity funds to elicit at least a token contribution from him were met with polite but adamant refusals.

Heartfelt tears of a mother saves her family

In the annals of Chabad, who has not heard of Reb Peretz Chein z”l, the prodigious Chasid of the Alter Rebbe, first Chabad Rebbe. His progeny today are leaders and shakers and movers around the world numbering in the thousands. Reb Peretz merited to live during the lifetime of six Chabad Rebbes, beginning with the Alter Rebbe till the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Yet his family from the Shaltiel clan, a well respected and knowledgeable Jewish family who were leaders among the Jewish people for many centuries, were not previously Chassidim. How did he come to become a Chasid?