Ezra Attiya

The pre-1948 facade of Porat Yosef Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem.

His tenure as rosh yeshiva was marked by political upheaval. When the 1929 Arab riots cut off access to the yeshiva building in the Old City, Attiya moved classes to several synagogues in the New City and appointed advanced students to teach them, while he personally supervised every location. This situation continued for eight years.[1]

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the yeshiva again evacuated to synagogues in the Katamon, Geula and Bucharim neighborhoods.[8] This time, however, the main yeshiva building in the Old City was burned to the ground by Jordanian troops, and thousands of Attiya's unpublished writings were burned along with it.[9] He refused to rewrite them, feeling that they were not meant for publication. Instead, his students would be his lifetime achievement.[10]

In the mid-1950s, Porat Yosef Yeshiva and the Gerrer community jointly purchased a plot of land in the Geula neighborhood, where the yeshiva and the Ger beis medrash were built side by side.[1] The original yeshiva campus in the Old City was rebuilt and reopened in the 1970s.

Rabbis of Porat Yosef Yeshiva in 1952. Left to right: Rabbis Yaakov Ades, Ben Zion Abba Shaul, Ezra Attiya, Mansour ben Shimon.

One of Attiya's greatest accomplishments was changing the way that yeshiva education was viewed in the Sephardic world. Until that time, full-time Torah learning past the age of bar mitzvah was reserved for gifted students from Sephardic homes; most Sephardic boys went to work to help support their families. Attiya did everything he could to enable boys to continue learning into their teens, many times offering to underwrite the costs of their education. In one case, a poor boy from Iraq applied for admission to the yeshiva but could not provide the necessary tuition. Attiya went to Rabbi Ben Zion Chazan, the yeshiva's founder and secretary, and offered to reduce his own salary to accommodate the boy. Rabbi Chazan then offered to reduce his own salary as well. The boy went on to become a respected talmid chacham.[11]

Attiya was similarly instrumental in keeping the young Ovadia Yosef in the Torah world. At one point, the promising young scholar suddenly stopped coming to yeshiva for several days. Attiya paid a visit to his home and was shocked by the poverty he saw there. Ovadia's father explained that he owned a small grocery store and needed his son to work for him. Attiya's efforts to convince the father of the importance of Torah learning fell on deaf ears. The next morning, when the father entered his store, he found Attiya standing there wearing a work apron. The rosh yeshiva explained that he had come to the store early that morning when Ovadia was opening up. He had told the boy that he had found a substitute worker who would work without pay, and sent him back to yeshiva. "You said that you needed someone to help and could not afford to pay. I am that someone. Your son's learning is more important than my time!" The father finally conceded and allowed his son to continue learning.[1][12]

Attiya was personally involved with every student in his yeshiva. He tested the younger boys every two to three months, gave a daily shiur to the older boys, taught a nightly shiur to the married kollel students, and gave a weekly musar (ethics) lecture — often lasting up to two hours — to the entire yeshiva.[13]

He also developed a unique Sephardic approach to Torah and musar. He always carried a copy of the musar classic Chovot ha-Levavot ("Duties of the Heart") on his person, and strongly advised his students to do the same. He instructed every class in the yeshiva to begin each day with a short musar lesson.[14]

He was greatly respected by such Torah leaders as Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank and the Chazon Ish. After visiting with him, the Chazon Ish expressed the opinion, "The rosh yeshivah possesses the power of reasoning like one of the Rishonim".[1][15] He had an encyclopedic knowledge of all areas of Torah. One of his leading students, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, testified at Attiya's funeral that his teacher knew the entire Choshen Mishpat (the section of the Shulchan Aruch dealing with monetary laws) by heart.

Attiya also served as a dayan (rabbinical judge) on the Sephardic beit din of Jerusalem. His opinion was sought and valued by rabbinical leaders and laymen alike.

Attiya fulfilled his goal of training Sephardic Torah scholars who could build Sephardic communities at large. During his tenure, he trained thousands of students, including many of the future leaders of Sephardic Jewry in Israel, the United States, Europe, South Africa and South America. These students included: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, future Sephardic Chief Rabbis of Israel; Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, renowned kabbalist; Rabbi Yehuda Tzadka, who succeeded him as rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef; Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul; Rabbi Baruch Ben Haim, who became a leader of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York; Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Haim, Rabbi of the Mashadi community in Great Neck, NY; and Rabbi Zion Levy, future Chief Rabbi of Panama.