Ezra Attiya - Early Life

Early Life

Rabbi Attiya was born on 31 January 1885 (Tu Bishvat 5645 on the Jewish calendar) in Aleppo, Syria, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents, Yitzchak and Leah, had lost several children in infancy, and before his birth they traveled to the gravesite of the Prophet Ezra to pray that if the child they were expecting was a boy, they would name him Ezra and see that he dedicated himself to a life of Torah. He had one brother, Eliyahu. His father, a respected Aleppo melamed (teacher), was a direct descendant of Rabbi Shem Tov Attiya, a disciple of Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch.

When Ezra was 16 years old, his family immigrated to Jerusalem's Old City, to which a large number of rabbis from Aleppo had immigrated. Soon after, his father died, leaving an impoverished widow and two orphans. While his mother hired herself out for domestic work in the homes of wealthy people, young Ezra decided to devote his life to Torah study. He went to learn, pray, and sleep on a bench in a small beth midrash in the Bukharim neighborhood of the New City called Shoshanim LeDavid, covering vast amounts of the Talmud with commentaries and poskim (halakhic decisors). As money was scarce in his household, he sustained himself with a nightly meal of dry pita seasoned with salt. In his old age, he told his students, "When I was young, I studied Torah through hardship. If we were truly fortunate, my mother and I had a whole pita to share. On rare occasions we also had an egg, which we divided in half. But the hunger did not bother me in the least."

In 1907, Rabbi Ezra Harari-Raful, another Aleppo immigrant, established the Ohel Mo'ed Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Rabbi Attiya was asked to join its staff along with distinguished Sephardic Rabbis Yosef Yedid HaLevi, head of the Sephardic beit din (rabbinical court) of Jerusalem, Shlomo Laniado, and Avraham Ades. He served as maggid shiur.