Benjamin, Baruch ben Israel
BENJAMIN, BARUCH BEN ISRAEL
BENJAMIN, BARUCH BEN ISRAEL (17th century), Jerusalem rabbi. After studying under his father, Baruch proceeded to the yeshivah of Isaac Gaon, where Kabbalah was included in the curriculum. He was a signatory to the regulation of 1646, which exempted rabbinic scholars from taxation (A. Ankawa, in Kerem Ḥemed, 2 (1871), 22b). In 1657 he, together with other Jerusalem kabbalists, endorsed the certificate which declared that Baruch Gad, the Jerusalem messenger to the East, had visited the Ten Lost Tribes. Some of his responsa were published in Mishpetei Ẓedek (1945, nos. 66, 95, 98, 100, 131, 133) of his friend, Samuel *Garmison. While serving as dayyan in Jerusalem he wrote a work on divorces (Jerusalem Ms. Heb. 8°199). Toward the end of his life he traveled to Egypt, possibly as an emissary, and he died there.
bibliography:
J. Sambari, Likkutim mi-Sefer Divrei Yosef, ed. by A. Berliner (1896), 66; Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 29; A. Yaari, in: Sinai, 6 (1940), 170–5.