Yiḥya Yitzḥak Halevi, son of Moshe (Musa) Yitzḥak Halevi ( also commonly known as Mori Yiḥya Yitzḥak from the house of Yitzḥak Halevi) (1867 – 1932), was a Yemeni born rabbinical scholar who served as one of the last great scholars and chief jurists of the rabbinic court at Ṣan‘ā’, which post he held for nearly thirty years, a time interrupted only during the siege laid to the city (Dec. 1904—Jan. 1906) by loyal Yemeni forces under Imām Yaḥyā Ḥamīd ad-Dīn (1904—1948) in their bid to oust the Ottoman Turks who then controlled the city. The Rabbi, meanwhile, had fled with his family to Dhamar.
Early life
Yiḥya Yitzḥak Halevi was born in Ṣan‘ā’, the eldest of ten children born unto Musa Yitzḥak, a tanner of hides by profession, and a descendant of one of the city's more illustrious Jewish families. Yiḥya Yitzḥak received his early education from his maternal grandfather, the Rabbi and kabbalist Shalom Mansura, and was already knowledgeable in the laws of ritual slaughtering at the early age of eleven. In 1880, at the age of thirteen, he began to study the Talmud and the legal writings of the poskim, with other boys his own age, in the house of his grandfather, the said Rabbi Mansura, until his grandfather's death in 1883. Afterwards, he studied under the prominent scholars in the famous Maharitz synagogue in Ṣan‘ā’. The synagogue served at that time as the city's chief seat of learning. In the evenings, he would continue his studies in the midrashic school belonging to the great teacher, Rabbi Ḥayim Qoraḥ (d. 1914), where they studied Ein Yaakov and the Shulchan Arukh and their respective commentaries.
Around the age of seventeen he married his first wife, Saadah Khamri, who died after she had given birth to five children (two sons and three daughters), two of whom died in their youth. One of his two sons, Shalom Yitzḥak (Ishaq) Halevi (b. 1891), immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1923 and became the Chief Rabbi of the Yemenite Jewish community in Tel Aviv-Yafo (1925 – 1961), serving also as the Av Beit-Din in a rabbinic court (1925 – 1956) in Tel Aviv, and was an active member of the Chief Rabbinate Council in Jerusalem for nearly forty years. Yiḥya, not willing to remain a widower, took in marriage a second wife, Rumiyyah, the daughter of Suleiman Hibshush, by whom he had other children. The Rabbi's youngest son, Hayyim Yitzḥak Halevi (born 1920), eventually immigrated to the Land of Israel in the airlift known as "Operation Magic Carpet," and served as the Chief Rabbi of Herzliya between the years 1972–2005.
As most scholars of his generation, Yiḥya Yitzḥak Halevi was trained in the laws of ritual slaughter of livestock such as prescribed in Jewish law and when later tasked with the public affairs and oversight of the community, he would ordain qualified ritual slaughterers of domesticated animals throughout the country, and periodically inspected them.
He was the scion of a prominent rabbinic family, the Sasson Halevi family, who came to Yemen from Iraq prior to the time of Muhammad.
Family origins
Although the family had lived in Yemen before the advent of Islam, the descendants of the illustrious Sasson Halevi of Iraq, the Bayt Yitzḥak Halevi family first rose to prominence during the return of the Jewish exiles from Mawza. In 1680, a certain man of this family, Rabbi Yeḥiya Halevi, was appointed governor over the affairs of the Jewish people. He begat a son, calling him by his own name, Yeḥiya, who in turn begat a son by the name of Shalom, who was the father of Abraham Al-Sheikh. He and his son, Shalom, became the first of their family to bear the name of Al-Sheikh, or "elder," owing to the king's great regard for this family.
Rabbi Yiḥya Yitzḥak Halevi and his family belonged to the Baladi-rite congregations of Yemen.