Chosen Rabbi At Eighteen
Berab was born at born at Moqueda near Toledo, Castilian Spain in 1474. He later became a pupil of Isaac Aboab. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain, he fled to Tlemçen, then the chief town of the Barbary states. There, the Jewish community consisting of 5,000 families, chose him for their rabbi, though he was but a youth of eighteen. Evidence of the great respect there paid him is afforded by the following lines of Abraham Gavison: "Say not that the lamp of the Law no longer in Israel burneth! Jacob Berab hath come back—once more among us he sojourneth!"
It is not known how long Berab remained in Algeria; but before 1522 he was in Jerusalem. There, however, the social conditions were so oppressive that he did not stay long, but went with his pupils to Egypt (Palestine letter, dated 1522, in Luncz, "Jerusalem," iii. 98). Some years later (1527) Berab, now fairly well-to-do, resided in Damascus (Levi ibn Habib, "Responsa," p. 117a); in 1533 he became rabbi at Cairo (ib. 33a); and several years after he seems to have finally settled in Safed, which then contained the largest Jewish community in Palestine. It was there that Berab conceived the bold idea which made him famous, that of establishing a central spiritual Jewish power.
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