Background
Azulai was born in Jerusalem, then under Ottoman rule, into a family of scholars. His father was considered to be one of the more notable rabbis of the Holy Land.
(Maagal Tov haShalem is a travel diary by Rabbi Chaim Yose...)
Maagal Tov haShalem is a travel diary by Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai covering the years 1753—78. This book is a reproduction of the Berlin 1921 edition.
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Chaim
Azulai was born in Jerusalem, then under Ottoman rule, into a family of scholars. His father was considered to be one of the more notable rabbis of the Holy Land.
He studied under several rabbis but did not spend much time engaged in his studies; due to his growing fame, he was summoned to public duty at a relatively young age.
During this period, much of the financial support for the minuscule and destitute Jewish community in Eretz Israel depended on enlisting the aid and contributions of well-to-do communities of the Diaspora. An indispensable means of gaining this support was performed by the shaliah (emissary), usually a Torah scholar of some eminence, who agreed to undertake a mission overseas that could last several years.
During his travels, the shaliah would call on far-flung Jewish communities, from Morocco and Amsterdam to Warsaw and the West Indies. There he would take up appeals for funds on behalf of the scholars of the Holy Land and their families.
Azulai was twenty-nine when he made his first journey to Italy as a shaliah, and had still to publish any of his works. Yet he earned the acclaim of the Italian communities, especially those of Leghorn (Livorno) and Ancona. An affluent Leghorn Jew even provided him with the money necessary for publishing his first book.
Unlike preceding emissaries, Azulai did not perceive his function as one of a mere fund-raiser, but used his travels to inquire into and unearth ancient Jewish books and documents. He would study these texts in order to broaden his knowlege, at times copying sections into his notebook, and whenever possible, purchasing them outright. He was the first Jewish scholar to research the Hebrew manuscripts that laid buried within the genizot (archives of disused Jewish writings) of the French and Italian libraries.
Azulai always took along his ubiquitous notebooks when manuscript hunting. These served him as a means to record material he had uncovered, or to note new Torah interpretation that occurred to him while perusing the works of the ancient authorities. In addition, they served to record the gist of his own diIn 1768, Azulai was a member of a delegation to Constantinople on behalf of the Jerusalem community, presenting their grievances against an oppressive official before the sultan. When the mission failed he did not return to Jerusalem, but went to Egypt, where he served as rabbi in the Cairo Jewish community for over four years.
Due to the outbreak of a revolt and the ensuing famine, he returned to Eretz Israel and settled in Hebron. Four years later, he once more set out as an emissary on behalf of the Hebron community. Passing through Egypt and Tunisia, he made his way to Italy, France, and the Low Countries, finally making his home in Leghorn, for the next thirty-eight years until his death.
In 1960, his remains were brought from Leghorn and reinterred in Jerusalem.
(Maagal Tov haShalem is a travel diary by Rabbi Chaim Yose...)
(Sermons by Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai - HaChidah. Rep...)
Wherever he went, Azulai made an impression on Jew and non-Jew alike by virtue of his profound and broad knowledge, power of oratory, and personal charm. He was respected by the leading scholars of his generation, and his books were well-received by members of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities alike.