YIẒḤAKI, DAVID

YIẒḤAKI, DAVID (c. 1615–1694), rabbi and halakhic authority of Ereẓ Israel. Yiẓḥaki was born in Salonika, where he studied under Elijah Gevartil, and later immigrated to Ereẓ Israel. He married the daughter of the kabbalist Abraham b. Mordecai *Azulai of Hebron, but appears to have lived in Jerusalem from 1661 to 1665. During the stay of *Shabbetai Ẓevi in Jerusalem (1662–65), Yiẓḥaki was attracted to him and became one of his most devoted followers. He was in Egypt in 1665 and, though at first shaken by Shabbetai Ẓevi's acceptance of Islam in 1666, he remained loyal to him. He presumably returned to Ereẓ Israel but left again in 1666 or 1667 and stayed for some time in Adrianople, where he studied under Shabbetai Ẓevi. After the widespread adoption of Islam in Salonika by the followers of the false messiah in 1683, however, Yiẓḥaki appears to have forsaken the movement completely. He returned to Jerusalem and in 1672 was appointed a dayyan in the bet din of Moses *Galante (Ha-Magen), after whose death in 1689 he acted as the leading rabbi of Jerusalem, where he died. His sons were Abraham *Yiẓḥaki, one of the leading persecutors of the Shabbateans, and Isaac Yiẓḥaki, a Jerusalem scholar.

bibliography:

Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 73f.; M.D. Gaon, Yehudei ha-Mizraḥ be-Ereẓ Yisrael, 2 (1938), 288f.; G. Scholem, in: Zion, 6 (1941), 87–89; 13–14 (1948–49), 59–62; Scholem, Shabbetai Ẓevi, 1 (1957), 155, 199;2 (1957), 401, 726; I. Sonne, in: Sefunot, 3–4 (1960), 47f.

[Abraham David]