Solomon Ayllon
| Solomon Ayllon | |
|---|---|
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 1660 or 1664 maybe Salonica, Ottoman Empire |
| Died | April 10, 1728 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
Solomon Ayllon (1660 or 1664 – April 10, 1728) was haham of the Sephardic congregations in London and Amsterdam, and a follower of Shabbethai Ẓebi. His name is derived from the town of Ayllon, in what is now the province of Segovia.
Ayllon was neither a general scholar nor a Talmudist of standing. But his history is closely interwoven with that of Shabbethaism in both the East and the West.
Ayllon's youth was passed in Salonica, which was probably his birthplace, although some persons assert that Safed was the place, because many Shabbethaians claimed to be of Palestinian birth. He associated with the Shabbethaian circles of Joseph Philosoph, Solomon Florentin, and other leading spirits of antinomian and communistic tendencies. There he is said to have married as his divinely appointed spouse a woman from whom another man had separated without the formality of a divorce, only to experience that she soon left him for a third spouse, whose "affinity" seemed holier to this strange sect than the bonds of lawful matrimony.
A few years later he visited Europe as a meshullaḥ (messenger) from the Palestinian congregations to collect funds for the poor of Palestine, leaving his wife and children domiciled in Safed, and having apparently publicly broken with Shabbethaism. From Livorno, where he was in 1688, he repaired to Amsterdam and thence to London, where, after a few months' stay, he was appointed haham on June 6, 1689.
The very next year, however, he was vigorously attacked by a member of the congregation, named Jacob Fidanque, who had heard something of Ayllon's antecedents. The Ma'amad, caring more for its dignity than for the truth, endeavored to suppress the scandal, but Ayllon's position was so hopelessly undermined by the exposure, that all the really learned members of the congregation would not submit to the new haham, which caused considerable friction, in spite of a pronunciamento ("haskamah") issued by the Ma'amad that under penalty of excommunication it was forbidden "to any one except the appointed haham to lay down the law or to render any legal decision".
Ayllon, in a letter to Sasportas six years later (1696), still complained bitterly of the unbearable relations between him and his congregation, and inasmuch as his Shabbethaian proclivities began to reassert themselves, and the congregation just then began to consider the propriety of asking for his resignation (M. Ḥagis, l.c.), he resolved to leave London, and was glad to accept an appointment as associate rabbi of the Sephardic congregation of Amsterdam, 1701.
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