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Concept
Yiḥyah Qafiḥ
Summary
Yiḥyah Qafiḥ (רבי יחיא בן שלמה קאפח; يحيى القافح also known as Yiḥyah ibn Shalomo el Qafiḥ and as Yahya Kapach (his Hebrew name)) (1850–1931), known also by his term of endearment "Ha-Yashish" (English: "the Elder"), served as the Chief Rabbi of Sana'a, Yemen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was one of the foremost rabbinical scholars in Sana'a during that period, and one who advocated many reforms in Jewish education. Besides being learned in astronomy and in the metaphysical science of rabbinic astrology, as well as in Jewish classical literature which he taught to his young students.
Rabbi Qafih was raised by his grandfather, after being orphaned of his father and mother at around the age of six. As a child, he studied Torah under the great Rabbi, R. Ḥayim Qoraḥ, his deceased mother's nephew. Later, he studied under Rabbi Yiḥya b. Yosef al-Qāreh, from whom he received his ritual-slaughtering license in 1870. Although Rabbi Yihya Qafih served for only one year (1899–1900) as the Chief Rabbi of Yemen (Turk. Ḥakham Bāshī), he was a permanent member of the rabbinic court in Sana'a until his death, serving with the Chief Jurist and Rabbi, Yihya Yitzhak Halevi (d. 1932), whose signatures appear together in many of the court documents and responsa issued in the first quarter of the 20th century. In the late 19th century, he was the host to the Austrian Arabist and archeologist, Eduard Glaser, who conducted research in Yemen, and at the turn of the 20th century, he carried on a written correspondence with one of the chief rabbis of Ottoman Palestine in Jaffa, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kohen Kook, who later took on this role in an official capacity in 1921, in which he and his fellow jurists answered twenty-six questions posed to the Court at Sana'a.
Rabbi Qafiḥ had served as one of the chief instructors in the city's largest seat of learning (yeshiva), held then in the synagogue known as Bayt Saleḥ, until a famine in 1905, resulting from a war with the Ottoman Turks, forced the closure of the yeshiva.
Official source
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