Moses Ibn Ḥabib

Moses ben Solomon Ibn Ḥabib was born in Salonika and went to Israel when he was about fifteen years old. There he studied in the yeshiva of Jacob Ḥagiz, whose daughter he married. Moses was a descendant of Levi Ibn Ḥabib, a rabbinic scholar in Salonika and Jerusalem and the grandson of Levi’s father, Jacob Ibn Ḥabib, author of ‘En Ya‘akov, a compilation of nonlegal material in the Talmud. In the 1670s, Ibn Ḥabib traveled throughout Jewish communities in Europe as an emissary, fundraising for the Jerusalem Jewish community. In 1688, he was appointed head of a yeshiva in Jerusalem, and a year later became the city’s chief rabbi. His grandson, Jacob Huli, wrote the Ladino Torah commentary Me‘am lo‘ez and published a number of Moses Ibn Ḥabib’s works posthumously.