Elijah Bekhor Ḥazzan, one of the foremost Sephardic halakhists and religious thinkers of his time, was born in Izmir (Smyrna) around 1846 and died in Alexandria on June 20, 1908. The son of Joseph Ḥazzan, he accompanied his grandfather Ḥayyim David to Jerusalem in 1855. In addition to the excellent rabbinic education provided by his grandfather, who was chief rabbi of Jerusalem from 1861 to 1869, Elijah also learned Arabic, French, Italian, and Spanish. Taking great interest in events in the world at large as well as in its Jewish communities, he w…