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An authorization letter to solicit and collect funds on behalf of the Tiberian community, signed by the community’s leading rabbis and members of the Bet Din. Throughout history there have always existed large numbers of Jews in need of help and organizations to accommodate. The one name invoked most often “Rebbe Meier Ba’al Ha’Ness” was utilized to collect monies throughout the Diaspora to help the settlers in Eretz Israel. As the resting place of Rebbe Meier, Tiberius, was closely associated with his name and emissaries were constantly sent throughout the Diaspora to collect funds for Tiberian Jewry. When the city was severely damaged by the violent earthquake of 1837, which destroyed most of the 16th-century city wall and caused the death of many inhabitants (according to one source, 1,000 Jews then lost their lives). Many of the surviving Jews fled to Jerusalem, but returned to Tiberius in the following years; in 1839 the city had 600 Jewish inhabitants. The importance of this emissary can be deduced by the number and importance of the signatories to the Authorization letter. |
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Signed by:
1. R. Hayyim Nissim b. Isaac Abulafia, (1775–1861), rabbi and communal worker, known also, from the initial letters of his name, as “Hana.” Born in Tiberius, he succeeded his father as the head of the Jews of Tiberius. In 1840, when some of the Arab sheikhs began to seize control of the villages and towns abandoned by the Egyptians and oppressed and maltreated their Jewish inhabitants, Abulafia asked the commander of the Turkish forces in Sidon (Saida) and Tripoli to take action to stop these acts. The latter immediately had instructions dispatched to the governor of Safed forbidding persecution of the Jews. Toward the end of his life Abulafia moved to Jerusalem and, in 1854, he was elected Rishon le-Zion. His writings have remained in manuscript, except for individual responsa published in the works of his contemporaries.
2. R. Abraham Hayyim Abulafia, rabbi communal worker, and a member of a family with roots to prominent Spanish Torah scholars.
3. R. Jacob Shealtiel b. Judah Ninio, (1800-c.1849), rabbi, kabbalist, and communal worker, Ninio was the son-in-law of R. Hayyim Shmuel Ha’kohen, Rabbi of Tiberias. His known works are a kabbalistic work on the Etz Hayyim, Emet Le’Yaacov, printed at Livorno in 1843, and Zerah Ya’acov, responsa and homiletics, printed by his son at Jerusalem in 1912.
4. R. Solomon Alfasi, rabbi and communal worker.
5. Galanti?
6. R. Moshe Saadon, rabbi and communal worker.
7. R. Judah Nehmad, rabbi and communal worker. Shedar to Morocco in 1801, letters of acclamation to him from several prominent Moroccan rabbis are extant. Upon his return to Tiberius in 1803 he apparently joined the Bet Din and his signature appears on many Bet Din documents to as late as 1846.
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