Alsheikh, Shalom ben Joseph
ALSHEIKH, SHALOM BEN JOSEPH
ALSHEIKH, SHALOM BEN JOSEPH (1859–1944), rabbi of the Yemenite community of Jerusalem. Alsheikh preached and taught at the Alsheikh Great Synagogue in Sanʾa. He left his hometown in 1888 and in early 1891 reached Jerusalem. There he first devoted himself to studying in various yeshivot. However, he became involved in the leadership of the community of Yemenite immigrants in Jerusalem, founding educational and charitable institutions for them. In 1893 Alsheikh was elected to the administrative committee of the Yemenite community; in 1895 he was one of the founders of the kabbalist yeshivah Reḥovot ha-Nahar; and in 1908 he was chosen chief rabbi of the Yemenite community of Jerusalem. He left several works in manuscript form, including a kabbalistic commentary on the Torah, sermons, commentary on Yemenite liturgy, and various liturgical poems. In his unfinished Divrei ha-Yamim le-Adat ha-Teimanim bi-Yrushalayim ("Chronicles of the Yemenite Community in Jerusalem"), he describes the tremendous awakening of Sanʾa Jewry to the idea of immigration to Ereẓ Israel and the beginning of the actual emigration in 1881–82.
bibliography:
Y. Ratzaby, in: Din ve-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Vaʿad ha-Kelali le-Adat ha-Teimanim (1946), 19–29; A. Yaari, Masot Ereẓ Yisrael (1946), 640–50, 781–2; Tidhar, 1 (1947), 151.
[Avraham Yaari]