Education
About 1679 he left his native city for Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, where he attended the yeshivah of Moses Galante, and ten years later he was sent to Europe to collect funds for Jerusalem.
About 1679 he left his native city for Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, where he attended the yeshivah of Moses Galante, and ten years later he was sent to Europe to collect funds for Jerusalem.
In 1691 he was in Amsterdam and began the printing of his work Peri Hadash (פרי חדש), a commentary on the Yoreh De"ah. He remained in that city for a year. Five years later he was again at Jerusalem, his movements in the interim being unknown.
He took a decided interest in the controversy of Moses Hagiz against Judah Vega, but his death in Jerusalem in 1698 cut short his activity in behalf of the former.
The freedom with which Silva discussed halakic problems brought the ban of the rabbis of Cairo upon his Peri Ḥadash, but it was afterward removed by Abraham Levi, although the two men, spiritually akin, were personally unacquainted. Silva was likewise the author of the Mayim Ḥayyim, containing a collection of notes on Talmudic treatises, together with responsa and a portion of the Yad of Maimonides.
Silva expressly states that he was a teacher at Jerusalem, not a rabbi, but despite this statement Luncz claims that he was chief rabbi of Jerusalem and that he died in 1740.