Navon, Benjamin Mordecai ben Ephraim

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NAVON, BENJAMIN MORDECAI BEN EPHRAIM

NAVON, BENJAMIN MORDECAI BEN EPHRAIM (1788–1851), kabbalist and halakhist, one of the outstanding Jerusalem sages of his time, son of Ephraim b. Jonah Navon. Navon was called Jilibin (Çelebi, a Turkish title of honor). He was head of the kabbalists of the "Midrash Ḥasidim Kehillah Kedoshah Bet El" and head of a bet din. He devoted himself to a great extent to communal affairs, and assisted Israel Bak in establishing his pioneer printing press in Jerusalem in 1841. Navon wrote many responsa, some of which were published under the title Benei Binyamin (1876) by Jacob Saul *Elyashar, his stepson and disciple, who also included many of his sermons in his Ish Emunim (1885).

bibliography:

Frumkin-Rivlin, 3 (1929), 292f.; M.D. Gaon, Yehudei ha-Mizraḥ be-Ereẓ Yisrael, 2 (1937), 450f.; Benayahu, in: Sinai, 24 (1948/49), 205–14; idem, Rabbi Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai (1959), 275.

[Abraham David]