Yosef Qafih

Yosef Qafiḥ (Hebrew: יוסף קאפח pronounced [josef qafiħ], Arabic: يوسف القافح), widely known as Rabbi Yosef Kapach (27 November 1917 – 21 July 2000), was a Yemenite-Israeli authority on Jewish religious law (halakha), a dayan of the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Israel, and one of the foremost leaders of the Yemenite Jewish community in Israel, where he was sought after by non-Yemenites as well. He is widely known for his editions and translations of the works of Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, and other early rabbinic authorities (Rishonim), particularly his restoration of the Mishneh Torah from old Yemenite manuscripts and his accompanying commentary culled from close to 300 additional commentators and with original insights. He was the grandson of Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, a prominent Yemenite leader and founder of the Dor Deah movement in Yemen. Qafih was the recipient of many awards, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from Bar-Ilan University.

Yosef Qafiḥ was born 27 November 1917 in Sana'a in Yemen. His father was Rabbi David Qafiḥ, who died after being assaulted by an Arab man, when his son Yosef was less than one year old. At the age of five, Yosef also lost his mother and was raised by his grandfather Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, under whom he studied Torah. In 1927, Yosef helped his grandfather retrieve the oldest complete Mishnah commentary from the Jewish community's genizah in Sana'a, containing Rabbi Nathan ben Abraham's elucidation of difficult words and passages in the Mishnah. The commentary was later published in Israel. (Young children in Yemen were often employed as copyists of ancient manuscripts.) At the age of thirteen, Yosef wrote out a complete copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed in Judeo-Arabic.

When Yosef was 14, his grandfather died. When he and two of his acquaintances went to visit the burial-site of Yosef's grandfather, and then his father, they were accused of having burnt the grave of his grandfather's chief disputant, and were arrested and held in bonds. Because of the rift in the community between those who adhered to kabbalah and the rationalists, the two informers told the Arab authority about the young Yosef being a Jewish orphan, and that under the laws of the state's Orphans' Decree he was required to be taken under the arms of the Islamic State and converted to Islam. The child was questioned about his father and upon the realization that his forced conversion to Islam was the informants' intent–with the arson accusation being a means to render him vulnerable to Muslim authority and attention–he did not answer his interrogator, and was released by the prison authority for no explained reason. The Imam, Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, urgently requested that they find him a bride to bypass forced conversion to Islam as an orphaned child. Rabbi Yihye al-Abyadh (the king's physician) arranged for Yosef's marriage to Bracha Saleh (Tzadok) in the same year of his grandfather's passing. In his early years, he worked as a silversmith.

In 1943 he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where he studied at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva and qualified as a dayan at the Harry Fischel Institute. In 1950 he was appointed as a dayan (rabbinic judge) in the Jerusalem district court. After Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was invited to serve on the Jerusalem beth din in 1958, in addition to Rabbi Qafih and Rabbi Waldenberg, rabbis Qafih and Yosef together would constitute a non-Ashkenazic majority in the beit din of three. In 1970, Qafih was appointed as a dayan in the Supreme Rabbinical Court. Throughout the course of more than half a century, numerous rabbis sat on various rabbinical courts with him, including Rabbis Tzvi Pesach Frank, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Ovadia Yosef, Avraham Shapira, Mordechai Eliyahu, and the Tzitz Eliezer.

Rabbi Yosef Qafiḥ was a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel and president of the Yemenite community in Jerusalem. He died on 21 July 2000 at the age of 82, and is buried in Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot cemetery.

His main work in the field of Torah literature was his translation and publication of manuscripts of numerous works by Sephardic Rishonim, including HaNivchar BeEmunot u'va-Deot of Saadia Gaon, the Torat Chovot HaLevavot by Bahya ibn Pakuda, the Kuzari by Judah ha-Levi and many other works in Judaeo-Arabic. The prime place in his oeuvre is reserved for the writings of Maimonides: he translated the Guide for the Perplexed, Commentary on the Mishnah, Sefer Hamitzvot, letters, and Beiur M'lekhet HaHiggayon, and he edited a 24-volume set of the Mishneh Torah (posthumously divided into 25). His works and translations received recognition from the academic and Rabbinic world alike. His edition of Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah in particular is a regularly cited source in ArtScroll's Yad Avraham Mishnah Series, with Rabbis Nosson Scherman and Meir Zlotowitz recognizing it as a "justly acclaimed translation of what is assumed to be Rambam's own manuscript." Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wrote that the seven years he sat with "the great Gaon Rabbi Yosef Qafiḥ ZT"L" in the beth din were "seven good years" and that Rabbi Qafiḥ toiled over his Torah day and night.

Qafih wrote extensively about the heritage of Yemenite Jews, describing in his sefer, "Halichot Teman", the Jewish life in Yemen, eclipsing even the renowned works of Amram Qorah and ethnographer, Yaakov Sapir. He published several works of Yemenite Jewish provenance, such as Maor ha-Afelah by Nethanel ben Isaiah (14th-century), and Garden of the Intellects by Natan'el al-Fayyumi (12th-century). He also published, under the title of the "Shivat Tzion" Tiklal, a Yemenite prayer book in three volumes with occasional notes citing views of Maimonides. In 1993 he published a new version under the title of "Siaḥ Yerushalayim" in four volumes (posthumously edited to six). Qafiḥ's seminal work, however, was his commentary on Maimonides' Mishne Torah, where he highlighted textual variations based on the Yemenite handwritten manuscripts of Maimonides' Code of Jewish law. Qafiḥ identified with the Dor Dai tendency, except that he did not publicly express opposition to the Zohar beyond saying that it was preferable to draw sustenance from the teachings of Maimonides. In his leadership of the Yemenite community in Israel he endeavored to maintain peace between the main factions in the community and worked to preserve Yemenite customs. In matters pertaining to Yemenite customs, even where later customs conflict with the earlier custom, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu regarded the opinion of Rabbi Qafiḥ, who he called Mori Yusef (Hebrew: מארי יוסף), to be decisive.

The fruit of Rabbi Qafiḥ's scholarship remains, for the most part, untranslated and as such largely inaccessible to the English-speaking public. Examples of English translations based on his bilingual (Hebrew/Arabic) editions include Saadia on Job by Dr. Lenn E. Goodman, Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, and Maimonides' Sefer Hamitzvot by Rabbi Berel Bell, Dayan of Kehilas Lubavitch on the Beth Din of Montreal and the founding dean of Chaya Mushka Seminary.