Zion Levy
Panamanian rabbi
Zion (Sion) Rajamim Levy (Hebrew: ציון רחמים לוי, pronounced Ṣiyyon Raḥamim Levi) (1925–2008) was the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Panama for 57 years. His tenure is thought to be the longest of any religious leader in the region. He built up a Jewish community of 6,000-7,000 Torah-observant Jews in a country of 3 million.
Biography
Early life
Levy was born in Jerusalem shortly after his parents immigrated to Israel from Morocco. His father was Rabbi Yaakov Levy, a noted kabbalist at Beit El Yeshiva. Levy studied at Porat Yosef Yeshiva.
Career
Levy arrived in Panama in 1951 at the urging of the Jerusalem beth din. In his later years, Levy oversaw the construction of new synagogues in Panama City and worked to smooth relations with the country’s Arab and Muslim communities. He frequently phoned the country’s imam for a talk.
Death
Levy suffered from ill health for several years.
“Zion Levy” enters the record as panamanian rabbi. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zion, Levy and Panamanian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zion Levy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.