The Background and Youth of Raphael Kassin

According to family tradition, the first Kassins to come to Aleppo arrived in the wake of the expulsion from Spain. They and their descendants lived in the city continuously from that point on. Over the generations, many members of the family became prominent Torah scholars, some of them even serving as rabbinic judges in the community. The greatest of these was Rabbi Yehudah Kassin who, towards the end of the eighteenth century, opposed the attempt by the chief rabbi of Aleppo, Rabbi Raphael Solomon Laniado, to impose upon those European Jews who had settled in Aleppo—the ‘Francos’—the edicts and regulations of the established local community. Yehudah Kassin’s grandson, Raphael Kassin, was the only son of his father, Elijah Kassin, who also served as head of the rabbinic court in Aleppo. Rabbi Elijah Kassin was a wealthy man, who spoiled his son and gave him everything he needed so that the young man could devote himself entirely to study, without having to earn his own living. As Raphael Kassin himself testifies: