Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (Chida) was a rabbinic scholar, prolific writer, publisher, pioneering biographer, and bibliographer. A great-great grandson of R. Avraham Azulai (the author of an important commentary on the Zohar), he was educated by some of the greatest rabbis of his generation, including Or HaChayyim Hakadosh (R. Chayyim ibn Attar) and R. Shalom Sharabi. He mastered Talmud, kabbalah and Jewish history at an early age. Though born and raised in Jerusalem, he spent much of his life as an emissary from the land of Israel traveling throughout the Jewish communities of Europe and raising funds for the support of communities in the land of Israel. His scholarship, knowledge of multiple languages, physical resilience, and bravery made him an ideal candidate for the task of emissary, on whose success the survival of the Jewish community of Chevron depended. Wherever he went, he visited famous libraries and examined books and manuscripts that he later described in Shem Gedolim, his unique and indispensable bibliographic dictionary. He read widely, seemingly remembered everything, and wrote and published numerous works on almost every imaginable Torah topic.
Works on Sefaria
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