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The Ben Ish Chai
Had One Special Talmid - Disciple
חכם יצחק כדורי זצל
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri
חכם יצחק כדורי זצל
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri
Yarzheit 29th Teves 5766 , 28th January 2006. May his soul be a מליץ יושר for all Klal Yisroel and a guide for all spiritually minded people throughout the whole world.
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri was born in Ottoman Turkish Iraq as early as 1899. In the true Sephardic tradition, the young Yishak Kaduri was a man of the world and a man of Tora. He started out working with his hands as a young man in the trade of binding books. His education took him to Chacham Yosef Chaim , known as the Ben Ish Hai, by the book that he authored of the same name), sometime before he was 13. Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri became one of the final disciples of the Ben Ish Hai, the last leader of Ottoman Iraqi Jewry.
The Ben Ish Hai had a great love for Eres Yisrael and generously gave his moral and financial support to several charity funds in Jerusalem. As a result of his influence, the Baghdadi born millionaire, Yosef Abraham Shalom of Calcutta, India bequeathed a sizable amount of money to the renowned Porat Yosef Yeshiva in the old city of Jerusalem, a yeshiva that Hakham Yishak Kaduri would later attend. The Ben Ish Hai had traveled to Jerusalem from Iraq, via Damascus, in 1869. There is no doubt that his experiences and passion would later influence the young Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri who would eventually make aliyah before his 18th birthday.
In 1909 when Chacham Yosef Haim died, the still young Yitzchak Kaduri was living in the end of what was still under the Sultan's control. When the Turkish lands fell following World War I, the new international boundaries of the modern 20th-century state of Iraq were drawn. These borders bore little resemblance to those of the provinces of Ottoman Iraq. On the west and south, Iraq connected to the sands of the Syrian and Arabian deserts. It was during this period of turmoil and international political change that the hakham emigrated to Erets Israel.
Once there, he studied in a yeshiva in Jerusalem and became a student of the Jerusalem kabbalists who had worked in Jerusalem since the beginning of the 19th century, this included Hakham Salman Eliyahu, father of the former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, HaRishon L'Sion, Mordehai Eliyahu.
Nobody knows precisely how old Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri was as the time of his death at Bikur Holim Hospital in Jerusalem. Estimates range between 106 and 115.
Legend has it that when Kaduri was 16 years old, Rabbi Yosef Chaim, known as the Ben Ish Chai, one of the most influential Sephardi rabbis of the 19th century, blessed Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri with a long life.
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri came to Israel from Baghdad at age 17 and studied under several legendary kabbalists, including Rabbi Yehuda Petaya, author of Beit Lechem Yehuda, and Rabbi Efraim Cohen, head of a group of kabbalists who studied at Porat Yosef Yeshiva. Other rabbis included in that study group were Rabbi Ezra Atia, head of Porat Yosef, Rabbi Mansour Ben-Shimon and Rabbi Salman Eliyahu, father of former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri later studied at Rabbi Yehuda Hadaya's Yeshivat Beit El in Jerusalem's Makor Baruch neighborhood. Rabbi Shmuel Darzi, one of Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri's last students and study partners passed away in January. Darzi was in his eighties.
Kaduri, known as "the senior kabbalist," is the last of a generation of Sephardi Jewish mystics. His close circle of friends and family say he was one of the few known living kabbalists who used "practical kabbalah," a type of Jewish magic aimed at affecting a change in the world.
They say Kaduri learned from the great kabbalists of previous generations the practice of writing amulets which heal, enhance fertility and bring success.
Also, according to his son David, Kaduri was involved in the removal of at least 20 dybbuks, lost souls that stray into the hapless bodies of living people to torment them.
However, according to sources close to the ancient mystic, even Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri never dabbled in the most dangerous types of Kabbalah that included forcing oaths on demons and evil spirits. Kabbalists believe that it is possible, in theory, to use holy names to trap demons and harness their powers. But those who do risk heavenly retribution.
More so called "rational" traditional-jews especially amongst german ashkanazic jews are skeptical about Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri's powers. In contrast, in all Sephardi circles Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri is considered a miracle worker. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of testimonials by Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri's faithful back up this claim to supernatural power.
Nevertheless, few doubted Kaduri's righteousness and vast knowledge of both conventional and more esoteric Jewish thought and law. For most of his life Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri was unknown to the general public. He led a modest life of study and prayer and worked as a bookbinder. During the past decade and a half he served as the head of Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Bukharan quarter.
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri's reputation as supernatural mystic began during and after the Yom Kippur War. Families of soldiers missing in action came to Kaduri to ask him to use his powers to determine whether their loved ones were dead or alive.
In 1998 a most unusual meeting took place in Jordan involving Hakham Yishak Kaduri and King Hussein of Jordan. The interaction between the Jordanian leader and the hakham started years previous when the hakham sent a message calling upon him to work towards peace in the world. The hakham had flown to Jordan as a personal guest of King Hussein. But he didn't join the rest of the delegation on the specially prepared flight or later in a car to the mountain, instead he was flown in a helicopter piloted by Hussein himself. He would be taken to the burial location of Aaron the High Priest, brother of Moshe, buried on Mount Hor in modern Jordan.
This was an unusual visit, as King Hussein had been a virulent enemy of the Jews for decades. He is remembered as the man who called upon the destruction of Israel, severely desecrated the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and whose troops destroyed every single synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem before 1967. But before the meeting, Hakham Kaduri's son clarified that his father would not be visiting the king in Amman for an official visit. He stated the purpose of the trip was only to pray at the gravesite of Aaron.
Students of the righteous rabbi say that the blessing of the Ben Ish Chai (the leading rabbi of Sephardic Jewry, d. 1904) and that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe - both of whom blessed him that he might live to see the Final Redeemer - came true. The rabbi's closest followers say that Rabbi Kaduri told them he met the Messiah on Cheshvan 9, 5764 (Nov. 4, 2003). He reportedly said that the Messiah is not promoting himself, and that a study of his [Rabbi Kaduri's] words in recent months would provide hints of his identity.
"He is not saying, 'I am the Mashiach, give me the leadership.' Rather the nation is pushing him to lead them, after they find [in my words] signs showing that he has the status of Mashiach." So said Rabbi Kaduri to one of his close relatives.
Rabbi Kaduri has also been quoted of late as saying that the imminent arrival of the Moshiach will "save Jerusalem that wish to take Jerusalem from the Jewish Nation - but they will not succeed, and they will fight each other as explained in Sefer Tana Devei Eliyahu"
This past Yom Kippur in October 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Rabbi Kaduri said, "Jews must come to the land of Israel to receive our righteous Mashiach, who has begun his influence and will reveal himself in the future."
On the 29th Teves 5766, Saturday evening 28th January 2006, Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri has passed over to the eternal Divine spirit world, at the over 100 years old.
Hakham Kaduri lived in the Bukharim neighborhood of Jerusalem and is associated with the Nachalat Yishak Yeshiva. He was an expert on making religious amulets, Kemayas, and many members of the public possess a gold or silver amulet of his. Every weekend many people, locals and visitors, visit the Hakham to kiss his hand out of respect or to get a special blessing for marriage, health or financial stability. Hakham Kaduri is married to Rabbanit Dorit Kaduri, who is many years younger than her husband.
Hakham Kaduri told that as a young man in Iraq, the Ben Ish Hai had blessed him, that he would live to see the generation of children which would welcome of the Mashiach (Messiah).
{ See here for the Video of his funeral in Jerusalem }
Please see full article on Ben Ish Chai
חכם יצחק כדורי זצל
Chacham Yitzchak Kadouri
is Buried on Har Menuchos - Givat Shaul
