Img. ID: 574252
The following description was prepared by William Gross:
Sar Shalom Sharabi (Hebrew: שר שלום מזרחי דידיע שרעבי), 1720–1777, was a Yemenite-Israeli Jewish Rabbi, Halachist, Chazzan and Kabbalist. In later life, he became the Rosh Yeshiva of Bet El Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem. His daughter married Rabbi Hayyim Abraham Gagin of Jerusalem, making him the great-great-grandfather of Shem Tob Gaguine, the "Keter Shem Tob." This manuscript was written by this same Shem Tob Gaguine and is signed on a front page as well as dated. Gaguine penned this Siddur at the age of 21 while he was still studying in Jerusalem.
Sar Shalom Sharabi was born in Jewish Sharab, Yemen. He moved to Palestine, then under Ottoman rule, in fulfillment of a vow. On his way he stayed in India, Baghdad and Damascus. He was one of the earlier commentators on the works of the Ari, a major source of Kabbalah. His Siddur was known as the "Siddur Ha-Kavvanot," and is the main siddur used today by Kabbalists for prayer, meditation and Yeshiva study. It is a Siddur with extensive Kabbalistic meditations by way of commentary.
Shemtob Gauguin (e) (5 September 1884 – 30 July 1953) was a British Sephardic rabbi and scion of a famous Moroccan rabbinical dynasty that emigrated to Palestine from Spain at the time of the Inquisition. He was the great-grandson of R. Chaim Abraham Gagin, the first Hakham Bashi of the Holy Land during the Ottoman Empire and the son and nephew respectively of Rabbis Isaac and Abraham Gaguin. He was the great-great grandson of the famous scholar and kabbalist, Sar Shalom Sharabi.
He studied at the "Doresh Zion" College, Jerusalem, and was a pupil of R. Jacob Alfiya. At an early age, he contributed articles to the Palestinian Hebrew Press ("Hahhabbezeleth" et al.) on aspects of Jewish traditional observances, as well as on biblical and philological matters. He was awarded rabbinical diplomas by numerous authorities, including R. Haim Berlin and Chief Rabbis Jacob Meir, C.B.E. and Abraham Kook, C.B.E. of Palestine. In 1911, Rabbi Gaguine was appointed to serve in the office of dayyanut in Cairo. In 1919, he was invited to serve In Manchester, being appointed Ab Beth Din 1n 1920. In 1927 he was appointed Rosh Yeshibah of Judith Montefiore College in Ramsgate.
His son, Rabbi Dr. Maurice Gaguine, served as rabbi of the Withington Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews.
This manuscript is from the Siddur prayers for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. The book was written by R. Shem Tov Gaguine (1884 - 1953) in the years 1905-1906. It contains 16 unnumbered leaves, 20 leaves with Hebrew numbering and approximately 48 leaves with regular numbering. The manuscript is part of a series of five volumes that were copied in the years 1905 - 1911 by Gaguine for the Gerrer Rabbi, R. Avraham Mordechai Alter, at the request of his father, R. Isaac Gaguine.
The part for the recitation of the Shema at night which belongs to this series (completed in Tevet, 1911) is in the library of Columbia University of New York, X 893 SH 2. The part on Yom Kippur, which was started in Cheshvan 1906 is in a private collection.
82 pp