רבי יצחק כדורי

Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri is the aged kabbalist who became in his generation a symbol of the old holiness of the East. Born in Baghdad, among the students of the Ben Ish Chai's study house in his youth, he went up to Jerusalem and lived there more than a hundred years, a kabbalist who wrote amulets and blessings and spoke little, and sat over Torah and prayer nearly all the hours of the day.

Kaduri was a living link to a world that was fading away: one who had seen with his own eyes the great sages of Babylon, and carried their tradition of Kabbalah into the twenty-first century. Many streamed to him for a blessing, but his true greatness lay in his quiet perseverance, in a hundred years of unceasing service of God.

In his simplicity and length of days he became a father figure to many, eastern and Ashkenazi alike, who saw in him the last connection to the great generation of sages of Babylon. He sought neither honor nor authority, but sat in his place and radiated a holiness of another era.

What do we learn from him? That there is immense value in continuity itself, in being a living link that binds one generation to another. Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri teaches that a hundred years of quiet perseverance in Torah and prayer are themselves a form of greatness, and that one who guards the tradition of his fathers and passes it on holds a thread of light that will not be torn.