Eliezer Shem-Tov Papo

The teacher, rabbi, and religious writer Eliezer Shem-Tov Papo (not to be confused with Eliezer Shem-Tov Papo, musar scholar and father of Judah Papo) was born and spent the majority of his life in Sarajevo, where he founded the Minḥat Eliyahu yeshiva, served on the rabbinic council, and was a member of the city’s ḥevrah kadisha. In 1860, he moved to Belgrade, where he served on that city’s rabbinic council between 1868 and 1884, and where he began to publish works in Judeo-Spanish. He immigrated to Palestine in 1896 and continued to publish books in Hebrew. Papo’s publications reflect his goal of educating the Sephardic communities in which he lived through works in Judeo-Spanish on religious observance.