Ben Attar News Today

Influential author, recipient of the Israel Prize and dozens of other awards was also known as a sharp-tongued polemicist and staunch Zionist

A number of years ago, after hailing a cab in Jerusalem and settling in for the ride, I noticed the driver’s name: Chaim Ben Attar.  Chaim Ben Attar?! “Are you a descendant of the holy Ohr HaChaim?” The sainted Rav Chaim ben Attar, originally of Morocco, eventually of Jerusalem, and now resting on Har Hazeitim (the Mount of Olives), is known to all who study his epic Torah commentary as the Ohr HaChaim Hakadosh.