Meorei Hamizrach - Rav Yehuda Tzadka

Our Great Sephardic Rabbis by: Ike Sultan

Rav Yehuda Tzadka was born in Yerushalayim on 3 Shevat, 5670. The Tzadka family lived in a small dwelling in the Beis Yisroel neighborhood of Yerushalayim. When Yehuda was 5, he began to study in a talmud Torah near his home. When his mother saw his education falling short of expectations, she registered him in the nearby yeshiva Bnei Tzion, where he soon became Bnei Tzion's top student. In 5698, after completing talmud Torah, 12-year-old Yehuda Tzadka enrolled in the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in the Old City. [Porat Yosef was founded in 1914 to preserve Sephardi Jewry by producing outstanding Sephardic Torah scholars who would perpetuate Torah and Torah study.] In Porat Yosef, the young and brilliant Yehuda Tzadka became very close with its great leaders, Rav Yaakov Addes and Rav Ezra Attia. In 5644 Reb Yehuda married Fahima, who was known for her modesty, alacrity and kindness, and together they built a genuine Torah home. Her greatest aspiration was to enable her husband to study Torah and to raise G-d-fearing children. The two were blessed with seven children, five boys and two girls, all of whom followed in their parents' footsteps. In 5730, when Rav Ezra Attia passed away, all of the helmsmen of the yeshiva agreed that only one man could replace him as rosh yeshiva: Rav Yehuda Tzadka, with whom he had been so close. Rav Yehuda Tzadka, Rosh Yeshiva of Porat Yosef, taught many great men, including Hacham Ben Sion Abba Shaul and Hacham Ovadiah Yosef. But it wasn't the greatest minds of the generation that came under his care; he believed strongly in the importance of laymen's learning, demanding diligence and serious study from the workingmen whom he taught every day from 4 o'clock to 5 o'clock in the morning.

One day Rav Yehuda overslept and came in just a few minutes before 5 o'clock. He sat down and opened the sefer that the group was learning, thought for a moment, and then closed it again. He then instructed the men to study on their own until prayer began at 5 o'clock. After prayers one of the men asked Rav Yehuda why he hadn't utilized those few precious minutes to teach them. Rav Yehuda explained that he was afraid that those who came to prayers at 5 o'clock would see him teaching and assume he had been teaching since 4 o'clock. Rav Yehuda couldn't bear the thought of such a deception and so has decided not to teach at all that day.