Alfandari
Alfandari
Family of eastern rabbis
Alfandari was a family of eastern rabbis prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries, found in Smyrna, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. The name may be derived from a Spanish locality, perhaps from Alfambra. The following is a list of the chief members of the family:
- Aaron ben Moses Alfandari
- Elijah Alfandari
- Ḥayyim ben Isaac Raphael Alfandari the Younger
- Ḥayyim ben Jacob Alfandari the Elder
- Isaac Raphael Alfandari
- Jacob ben Ḥayyim Alfandari
- Solomon Eliezer Alfandari
Members of this family were to be found as of 1906 in Constantinople and in Beirut. A Portuguese family of the name Alphandéry still exists, as of 1906, in Paris and Avignon. In Avignon there was a physician, Moses Alphandéry, in 1506,[1] and a Lyon Alphanderic, in 1558.[2] Compare the names Moses אלפנדריך[3] and Aaron אלפנדארק.[4]
In addition to the persons mentioned above, there is known a Solomon Alfandari (Valencia, 1367), whose son Jacob assisted Samuel Ẓarẓa in tranṣlating the Sefer ha-'Aẓamim of pseudo-ibn Ezra from Arabic into Hebrew. A merchant, Isaac Alfandari, was wrecked in 1529 on the Nubian coast.[5] In Israeli popular culture, the principal family in the 1973 film Daughters, Daughters is named Alfandari.
For a possible explanation of the name, see Steinschneider.[6]
Henri Alfandari has been a French Member of Parliament since 2022.
