Known as the Ḥaviv (the acronym for his name in Hebrew), Ḥayyim Benveniste is considered to have been one of the greatest halakhic sages of the Sephardic Diaspora and of world Jewry in general. He was born in Istanbul in 1603 to a family of rabbis, physicians, and advisers to the Ottoman court descended from Portuguese Jews who had been exiled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century; he died in Izmir (Smyrna) in 1673.

Benveniste was a student of Joseph Trani (Mitrani), known as Maharit, the chief rabbi of Istanbul. In 1643, after serving for a time as supervisor of issur ve-h…