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Fascinating responsa on the issue of a young lady whose wedding ceremony was destroyed by claims that she is the illegitimate child of a scorned woman. The story began in 1917 when the mother was divorced by the decree of the Cairo Bet Din and the child proclaimed illegitimate based on the father’s claims that he had not had any relations with his wife for at least a year prior to the pregnancy. The husband’s tale includes a lover, in-laws with a gripe, and several other factors, all vehemently denied by the wife. Nevertheless, the Cairo Bet-Din assumed the father’s position in total. R. Toledano and the Alexandria Bet Din reverses the rulings with the concurrence of many major rabbis, whose letters are printed in the pamphlet. The title of the book is a play on the ruling in that the young lady is “a soul returned” to her nation.
R. Jacob Moshe Toledano (1880–1960), rabbi and scholar. Toledano's father Judah had immigrated from Morocco. Jacob was born, educated, and ordained in Tiberias. During 1899–1909, his first articles appeared in the Jerusalem Hebrew paper Havazzelet, under the title Hiddushei Torah. They were written in elegant Hebrew and in a scholarly style. Toledano was also interested in ancient manuscripts preserved in the libraries and yeshivot of oriental countries. He conceived the idea of founding a society to publish them and with this aim in mind entered into correspondence with scholars in western countries who encouraged him to implement the project. As a result of the cholera epidemic in Tiberias in 1903, he and his family left the town and settled in Peki'in. During the seven years he lived there he devoted himself to the study of the history of oriental Jewry and its personalities, as well as to the affairs of the Peki'in community, and published his Ner ha-Ma'arav. At the beginning of World War I, together with 700 "French" Jews (of North African descent) from Galilee, he was exiled from Erez Israel to Corsica because of his French citizenship. As the representative of the Alliance IsraMlite Universelle and the French government, he headed the committee of exiles and worked for their material and spiritual benefit. In 1920 he returned to Tiberias and took part in activities to revive communal life in the town; he represented it in 1921 at the rabbinical conference held in Jerusalem to establish the chief rabbinate of Erez Israel. In 1926 he was appointed a member of the Tangier rabbinate, and in 1929 av bet din and deputy chief rabbi of Cairo. In 1933 he was appointed to the similar office in Alexandria, as well as deputy head of the rabbinical court of appeals in Cairo, and in 1937 he became chief rabbi of Alexandria. In 1942 he was elected Sephardi chief rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, succeeding Ben Zion Ouziel. In 1958, when the religious parties had left the government coalition, he was appointed minister of religious affairs.
His other books included Appiryon (Jerusalem, 1905), a bibliography of the supercommentators to Rashi's commentary to the Pentateuch; Yedei Moshe (Safed, 1915), a commentary on the Mishnah Pesahim by Maimonides from a manuscript; Yam ha-Gadol (Cairo, 1931), responsa; Sarid u-Falit (Tel Aviv, 1945), giving passages from manuscripts on ancient works dealing with the Talmud, Jewish scholarship, the history of the settlement in Erez Israel, and bibliography; and Ozar Genazim (1960), a collection of letters on the history of Erez Israel from ancient manuscripts, with introductions and notes. |
