Kaf HaChaim
Jerusalem · 1905
Y
Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim)
Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim)
1870 CE–1939 CE · Modern · Baghdad
Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer (1870–1939) was a Sephardic rabbi, kabbalist, talmudist, and posek, best known as the author of the Kaf HaChaim. Born in Baghdad, he studied under Rabbi Abdallah Somekh and the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Hayyim). In 1904 he settled permanently in Jerusalem, where he studied at the Beit El kabbalistic yeshiva and later at Shoshanim leDavid, composing the Kaf HaChaim — an influential Sephardic halachic commentary on the Shulchan Aruch. He had no connection to Hungary or to the Sofer (Schreiber) family of Pressburg.
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Stop 1 of 21870–1904Born
BaghdadIraq
What they did here
Born in Baghdad; studied under R. Abdallah Somekh and the Ben Ish Chai (R. Yosef Hayyim).
Baghdad in this era
Baghdad in the modern era remained home to one of the Middle East's oldest and most culturally rich Jewish communities, even as the wider world convulsed with emancipation, nationalism, and catastrophe. Under Ottoman rule through the nineteenth century and then British mandate after World War I, Iraqi Jews—numbering around 150,000 by the twentieth century's mid-point—enjoyed relative security and prosperity, dominating trade and serving as merchants, money-changers, and professionals. The community maintained vibrant yeshivas where traditional Babylonian Jewish learning flourished, and Hebrew printing presses produced works that circulated throughout the Levantine world. Yet this stability proved fragile: growing Arab nationalism, the founding of Israel in 1948, and subsequent Arab-Israeli wars ignited violent upheaval. Massive Jewish emigration followed, with over 100,000 Iraqi Jews airlifted to Israel between 1950 and 1952 in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. The storied Jewish quarter, once filled with synagogues and study halls stretching back centuries, emptied within a generation. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, born in Baghdad in 1920, carried this heritage of Iraqi Jewry with him into his monumental career as a leading Sephardic halakhic authority and spiritual guide to hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide.
About Baghdad
Baghdad, on the Tigris, is the capital of modern Iraq. The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded it in 762 as his capital, and for five centuries it was a leading centre of Islamic learning, with the House of Wisdom, the Nizamiyya madrasa and many jurists, Sufis and scientists; Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, eponym of the Qadiriyya order, is buried there. The Mongol sack of 1258 ended the caliphate, and the city later passed to Ottoman rule. It was also a seat of the patriarchs of the Church of the East and of the exilarch who headed Babylonian Jewry. Its Jewish community, whose foremost nineteenth-century rabbi was Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai), almost entirely emigrated to Israel in 1950-52.
In Baghdad at the same time
Eliyahu Yehoshua Ovadia, Zivchei Tzedek, Ben Ish Chai, Menahem Saleh Daniel, Ezra Dangoor, Shelomoh Tvena
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim)’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Eliyahu Yehoshua Ovadia, Zivchei Tzedek, Yisa Berakhah, Naftali Amsterdam, Ben Ish Chai, Yitzchak Blazer, Ba'al HaLeshem, Aderet, Menahem Saleh Daniel, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Ezra Dangoor, Alter of Slabodka, Zalman Sender Kahana-Shapiro, Dor Revi'i, Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Shelomoh Tvena, Minhat Yehuda, Rav Kook
Works(3)
Kaf HaChayim on Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ahכף החיים על שולחן ערוך יורה דעה
Jerusalem · 1900
Kaf HaChayim on Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayimכף החיים על שולחן ערוך אורח חיים
Jerusalem · 1912
Related figuresבאBen Ish ChaiSuggested by shared subject matter, not a documented teaching relationship.