Ḥayyim ha-Kohen of Aram Ṣoba (Aleppo) was born in Egypt in 1585, with an ancestry that traced back to Spain by way of Baghdad and Jerusalem. He moved to Safed, where he encountered Hayyim Vital at the height of the latter’s influence. A letter from Shlumiel of Dreznis, the earliest chronicler of the Safed renaissance, notes the powerful rabbi/disciple relationship of the two scholars. Ḥayyim ha-Kohen subsequently relocated to Aleppo and presided over the rabbinical court there until 1653. While seeing to the publication of his works in Livorno, he initiated Nathan Neta Hanover into th…