Rabbi Eliezer Farḥī was born in Tunis in 1851 and died there in 1930. Like his father, who had come to Tunis from Jerusalem, he was associated with the local Grana (Livornese) community. Farḥī was a talented writer, a fine poet, and above all a devout Zionist whose impassioned speeches over the years stirred the hearts of many coreligionists. Between 1871 and 1883, he made three journeys to Livorno (Leghorn) and sojourned there for four years with his father’s brother, the great scholar and writer Joseph Shabbetay Farḥī (d. 1882). While in Livorno he was ordained a rabbi and mar…