Mordechai Sharabi
Rabbi (or Hakham) Mordechai Sharabi (1908, Jewish Sharab, Yemen – 1984, Jerusalem, Israel) was the founder and rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Nahar Shalom, a yeshiva for the study of the Kabbalah of the Rashash, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mahane Yehuda. He was married for over 50 years to a wife who could not have children. By Rabbinical law, he was allowed to divorce her, but instead, accepted his fate as God's fate. After her death, he married a very young woman who bore him one son. The boy was allowed to listen to his father's lessons outside of the Rabbi's bedroom, while Rabbi Sharabi was bedridden. Many of his followers today do not know that he had a child and nobody knows what happened to this boy, whose father died when he was five years old. Rabbi Sharabi was revered by hundreds of thousands of Israelis who would stand in line outside of his home, sometimes for days on end, to seek his advice. He was known to have had mystical powers by analyzing people's lives all the way down to their lives' minute details without the visitors even asking questions. He never took money for his advice, only accepted donations if given. A world-renowned kabbalist, he was accepted by the kabbalists of his time, and had the admiration of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
A set of three of his books focusing on remedies that built upon Rashash intentions from verses in selected Psalms were published posthumously.[1]
Notable students
His student, Rabbi Benayahu Shmueli, leads Yeshivat Nahar Shalom today. Other notable students include Rabbi Meir Levi, and Rabbi Elazar Mordechai Koenig, spiritual leader of the Breslov Hasidim of Safed.[2]