The Candle of Little Jerusalem: Meet Mullah Or Shraga of Yazd

Ask a Persian Jew in Los Angeles to name a great rabbi from Iran. How many of us could name one from our own heritage?

We know the Baal Shem Tov, the Vilna Gaon, Ramchal and the Ben Ish Hai. But what about the great sages of Persia?

Let me introduce you to one of them.

In November 2018, a news report described Iranian Jews traveling hundreds of kilometers to Yazd, a desert city roughly 600 kilometers from Tehran. They came to mark the yahrzeit of a rabbi who had died more than two centuries earlier. Some described the trip as difficult and expensive. They made it anyway.¹

The rabbi was Mullah Or Shraga, one of the most revered figures in Persian Jewish history. His yahrzeit, 28 Cheshvan, fell this year on Sunday, November 8, beginning Saturday night.

What makes his story remarkable is how his influence survived.

Who was the “little candle” of Yazd?

Or Shraga lived in the eighteenth century in Yazd, Iran. His father was Rabbi Shmuel, and accounts of his family history connect his ancestors to the city of Sabzevar in northeastern Persia.²

His name is itself a lesson: Or means light in Hebrew, and shraga is Aramaic for a lamp or candle.

Persian Jews used the title Mullah for learned religious leaders. Or Shraga was known as a scholar of Torah and Kabbalah, and served his community as a dayan (religious judge), mohel, shochet and bodek.²

He is remembered most for his commitment to Torah education. Community histories credit him with expanding Jewish religious education in Yazd and founding a yeshiva open to children from poor families as well as wealthy ones. It drew students from outside the city.³

To see why this mattered, we need to understand Yazd.

The city already had an old Jewish learning tradition. Encyclopaedia Judaica records evidence of Jewish scholarship there as early as the ninth century. Or Shraga did not bring Torah learning to Yazd. His achievement was helping build a strong new generation of scholars and communal leaders.⁴

In time, Yazd became known among Persian Jews as Yerushalayim HaKetanah, Little Jerusalem.³ The name came from the place Torah learning held in the community’s identity, far more than from the size of its Jewish population.

Where are his books?

Here is something unusual. For a rabbi whose influence lasted generations, very little of his own writing has been documented.

Historians identify two surviving letters, both addressed to the Jewish community of Mashhad:

• 1782: Or Shraga asked the Jews of Mashhad to help Chacham Eliyahu, an emissary from Hebron collecting support for the Jewish community in the Land of Israel.
• 1783: He took up the case of Yitzchak ben Yehuda Cohen, who had left his wife in Yazd without support. Or Shraga asked the community to compel the husband to provide for her or, if that could not be arranged, to send her a get so she could be released from the marriage.⁵

Two letters. One for the Jews of the Holy Land, the other for an abandoned wife.

We cannot conclude these were the only things he ever wrote. Nor do we have evidence that a large library of his books was lost. What we can say is that these two letters give a rare glimpse into his priorities.

And they raise a question.

How does a rabbi with so few surviving writings stay influential more than 230 years after his death?

Pirkei Avot offers an answer in its very first Mishnah:

A rabbi can preserve Torah through books. He can also preserve it through people. Or Shraga’s legacy seems to have traveled mainly through the second path.

When stories carry the teacher

Persian Jewish tradition preserves stories about Or Shraga’s devotion to learning.

One familiar account describes how he fought off sleep while studying late into the night. He placed an upside-down copper pot on his table with a candle burning beneath it, and rested his head on the pot. Whenever he started to doze, the warming metal forced him to lift his head and keep learning.⁶

A candle keeping a student of Torah awake.

The story is tradition, not independently established history. Its weight lies in what generations of Persian Jews chose to remember about their teacher: a man consumed by Torah study.

His reputation also shows at his burial site. Or Shraga was buried outside Yazd, and his tomb became a place of pilgrimage. Accounts describe both Jewish and Muslim visitors treating it with reverence.⁷ Miracles were attributed to him, though those claims cannot be verified.

Mullah Or Shraga’s tomb outside Yazd: the entrance, inside the tomb, and his gravestone. Photos courtesy of Ohr Hashalom, used with permission.

What can be documented is the ongoing tradition of remembrance, including yearly gatherings in Yazd and later in Jerusalem.

How does one candle light a dynasty?

Perhaps the strongest evidence of his influence is the family of scholars who followed him.

He and his wife Malkah had two sons, Shmuel and Moshe, both remembered as rabbis and students of Kabbalah.² Their descendants continued in rabbinic leadership in Yazd.

Historians back this up. David Yeroushalmi, drawing on research by Azaria Levy, documents the family’s importance over about two centuries. He names among its rabbinic leaders:

• Or Shraga’s son Moshe
• His grandson Yitzchak
• His great-grandson Moshe, known as Mullah Agha Baba

The family’s names also appear in nineteenth-century marriage documents and rabbinic letters.⁸

The Or Shraga family tree (in Persian). Courtesy of 7Dorim, used with permission.

Generations later, another descendant, Chacham Yousef Haim Or-Sharga (1898–1978), studied in Jerusalem and returned to Yazd in 1928. He helped renew the city’s Jewish religious education and later became a leading rabbinic figure in Tehran.⁹

Chacham Yousef Haim Or-Sharga (1898–1978). Photo courtesy of 7Dorim, used with permission.

When Little Jerusalem moves to Jerusalem

The story did not end in Persia.

Jews from Yazd were among the early Iranian Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel. Many settled in Jerusalem and Safed, bringing their traditions with them.⁴ In Jerusalem, the Yazdi community built institutions tied to Tiferet Yerushalayim.

A community history published by Rabbi Yair Hoffman reports that in 1957 an organization was founded to help more Jews come from Yazd. It also records the laying of a synagogue cornerstone on 24 Elul 5721 (1961), with Rav Ovadia Yosef and community leader Rav Yosef Bar Chaim Shraga, a descendant of Or Shraga, taking part.¹⁰

Rav Yosef Shraga, a descendant of Or Shraga, introduces Rav Ovadia Yosef at the Yazdi synagogue in Jerusalem, 2001–2002. Photo: Shmualor, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The link to Rav Ovadia Yosef became especially meaningful, he became the community Rabbi for many years, Rav Ovadia gave his famous Motzei Shabbat Torah lectures at the Yazdi synagogue in Jerusalem’s Bukharan neighborhood. The lectures drew large crowds and were broadcast by radio, carrying his Torah far beyond the synagogue walls. His son, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, later continued the tradition.¹⁰

In his introduction to the community history Mi-Yazd Le-Eretz HaKodesh, Rav Ovadia praised the religious devotion of the Jews of Yazd. According to the passage Rabbi Hoffman reproduces, he called their community an achsania shel Torah, a place that hosts and nurtures Torah learning.¹⁰

The legacy is still alive

In 1979, Rabbi Moshe Bar Shalom, a descendant of Or Shraga, founded the Ohr Hashalom and Ohr Shraga institutions in Jerusalem. Today they offer religious education from childhood through advanced yeshiva and kollel study.¹¹

Talmud Torah Ohr Shraga, Jerusalem. Photo: קפדניקו, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Another descendant, Rabbi Baruch Shraga, serves as a senior rabbinic judge on the Jerusalem Religious Council’s rabbinical court.¹²

Rabbi Baruch Shraga, 2023. Photo: משה לנקרי, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Or Shraga’s name lives on in working institutions, well beyond a gravestone.

Some of his legacy survives through institutions. Some through the voices of descendants and students. And some through each generation’s decision to teach the next.

What will survive of us?

When Moshe Rabbeinu shared his spirit with the seventy elders, Rashi explains it with the image of a candle. A candle stands on a menorah. Other candles are lit from it, yet its own light is not reduced at all.¹³

Knowledge is unusual that way.

Give someone money, and you have less money. Give someone your time, and you have less time. Teach someone Torah, and the Torah you have does not shrink.

It multiplies.

We live in a world overflowing with information. More books, recorded classes, podcasts and digital libraries are open to us than earlier generations could have imagined.

Yet access to information and passing on wisdom are two different things. A book can be stored. A lesson must be absorbed. A tradition must be lived.

More than two centuries after Or Shraga’s death, we can still trace his influence in students, descendants, institutions and traditions of learning.

Books matter enormously. But the ultimate measure of a teacher is what continues to live through those he teaches.

The strongest legacy is the light you help others carry forward.