24 Tishrei · Yahrzeit
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe ben Yehuda Toledano
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe ben Yehuda Toledano
Yahrzeit - 24 Tishrei
Resting place - Har HaMenuchot, Jerusalem
He was born on August 18, 1880, in Tiberias to Miriam-Remo and Chacham Yehuda Toledano - his father, who had immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1862 from Meknes, Morocco, headed a yeshiva there.
He is the author of the famous responsa "Yam HaGadol", and was a Sephardic Mekubal and Rav-Posek.
He began his studies under Rabbi Chai Elyakim and continued them at his father's yeshiva.
In 1896, at the age of 17, he married Masauda Chana, daughter of Moshe Aharon Shlush. That same year he received his rabbinic ordination and began teaching at his father's yeshiva.
For four years Toledano lived among the small Jewish community in the Galilee, where he was one of the founders of the Jewish school in Peki'in. "The beautiful gardens of Peki'in calmed me," Rabbi Toledano wrote, and indeed, many of his writings and studies were composed in this village.
During World War I, Toledano received French citizenship after being expelled by the Ottoman authorities, and lived on Corsica together with 800 other members of the Galilean Jewish community. He served as rabbi of the local Jewish community on the island and devoted himself to improving Jewish life there. In 1920, the French government allowed Toledano to return to Tiberias. Chacham Toledano worked to restore the holy sites in the vicinity of the city. He tried to interest the Chovevei Zion society and the Jewish National Fund in redeeming the lands surrounding the tombs of the Rambam and Rabbi Akiva, but was unable to interest them. Instead, he founded the Maimon Society, which purchased a large plot of land from the Arabs, on which the first neighborhood on the outskirts of Tiberias was built.
Between 1926 and 1928, Toledano was a member of the Chief Rabbinate in Tangier and served on the Beit Din of the city's Jewish community. By 1941 he had been appointed head of the Beit Din and deputy chief rabbi of Cairo, head of the Beit Din in Alexandria, and a member of the Beit Din in Egypt. In 1942 he was elected Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He held this position until 1958, and together with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, helped establish a special court for Agunot.
When David Ben-Gurion formed the ninth government on December 17, 1959, Toledano returned to his ministerial role and served until his death from a heart attack in October 1960.
In July 1960, just a month before his death, he married Mary Sebag, a 20-year-old girl from Moshav Tirosh. This marriage drew criticism of Toledano in most of the Israeli media, against which Toledano defended himself, saying the marriage was lawful because he had observed the Jewish law stating that a man must wait through two festivals after the death of his first wife. Toledano also stated: "I am a man of Eastern tradition, and I based my marriage not on European Jewish tastes, but in accordance with Jewish law."
Toledano collected and studied numerous ancient manuscripts of the Jews of Spain and North Africa. One of the most famous manuscripts he discovered was the Rambam's commentary on the Mishnah in Arabic, as it was originally written, which Toledano discovered together with his brother Baruch Toledano in Damascus.
While living in Israel, Toledano collaborated with the archaeologist Nahum Slouschz to help discover the hot springs in Tiberias built by the Romans.
In 1950, Toledano was sent by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to Morocco, where he discovered several more ancient manuscripts.
Rabbi Toledano wrote several religious commentaries, and received the Rav Kook Prize in 1957 in a special category for his work.
Chacham Yaakov Moshe Toledano ascended to the Heavenly Yeshiva on 24 Tishrei 5720 (1960) and was buried in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem.
One of the questions to which Rabbi Toledano devoted proper attention was the permissibility of lighting Chanukah candles with electric light.
This is important for those in hospitals or college dormitories, where it is not permitted to light open flames indoors. In addition, for safety reasons, we should never leave burning candles unattended at home. In such cases, it would be extremely helpful to use electric lighting.
Central to the halachic question is whether electric light, especially an incandescent bulb, is considered halachically to be "eish" - fire. Among the Poskim there is a unanimous opinion that it is fire, and turning on an incandescent bulb on Shabbat would constitute a violation of kindling fire on Shabbat. If this is so, it might seem that electric lighting could be used for Chanukah, but in fact this is a matter of dispute.
Some Poskim maintain that at the moment of lighting, there must be "oil" present in the lamp, and here the "oil" - the electricity that will be needed for the duration the candles burn - will only be generated and supplied through the light socket. A menorah running on batteries would solve this problem, but more importantly, many other Poskim teach that when you connect to a system that reliably supplies fuel, the fuel is considered present at the time of lighting.
Rav Toledano draws attention to another issue: if lighting the Chanukah candles requires a formal act of kindling, then perhaps flipping a switch does not constitute such an act. In the end, he states that in his opinion electric lighting may be used, although he admits he cannot prove this conclusively. In situations where a person may not have access to open flame, or if someone must leave it unattended (and cannot extinguish it half an hour after lighting), they may use incandescent bulbs and recite a bracha over them. The use of LED lights is somewhat more questionable.
As for Shabbat candles, the use of electric light and LEDs is certainly permitted. If there are any safety concerns, such as leaving Shabbat candles unattended when invited out for a Friday night dinner, one should use electric candles or simply turn on the electric light in one's dining room.