Levi, Said ben Shalom

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LEVI, SAID BEN SHALOM

LEVI, SAID BEN SHALOM (d. 1917), educator and writer; known as "Hakham Said." One of the first Yemenite immigrants to Ereẓ Israel, Levi settled in Jaffa in 1888, where he became a teacher in the talmud torah Torah Or. From the diary of his school, which is extant, one learns of the modern educational methods which he attempted to adopt. In 1889 he left for Algiers as the emissary of the Sephardim. He was also the secretary of the Yemenite workers' union Pe'ullat Sakhir, whose objective was to employ Jewish rather than Arab labor in the settlements. He was a gifted writer and he had an exceptionally fine Hebrew style. His diary of World War i, which relates the sufferings of the yishuv during the war, is also extant.

bibliography:

Y. Ratzaby, in: Shivat Ẓiyyon, 2–3 (1953), 404–25.

[Yehuda Ratzaby]