In an Italian municipal document, his name is recorded as "Maestro Servadio di Habramo da Bertinoro", with Servadio being a translation of Ovadiah and Habramo a transliteration of Abraham (his father's name). He was also known by the Hebrew acronym יר"א (
Yareh). and became rabbi in
Bertinoro, a town in the modern
province of Forlì-Cesena, whence he derived his by-name, and in
Castello.
In Israel The desire to visit the
Holy Land led him to Jerusalem, and he arrived there on March 25, 1488, having commenced his journey on October 29, 1486. At the time, the Jewish community in Jerusalem was suffering greatly from oppressive levels of taxation, which led to suffering and emigration. He succeeded in obtaining a reduction in taxation levels from the government and supported the Jewish poor using his wealth from Italy. Bertinoro's personality, eloquence, and great reputation as a scholar led to his being accepted as the community's spiritual head immediately upon his arrival. His first care was to raise the intellectual plane of the community, and for this purpose, he interested the younger generation in the study of the
Talmud and
rabbinic literature, and he delivered sermons every other
Shabbat in Hebrew. Upon the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many exiles settled in Jerusalem, and Bertinoro became their intellectual leader. These Spanish Jews, more educated than the
Musta'arabi Jews of
Israel, presented Bertinoro with a site for a
yeshiva in Jerusalem, which he founded, centuries after the extinction of the last academy in Israel. The Jews of Egypt and Turkey supported the maintenance of the yeshiva at Bertinoro's written solicitation. , the
nagid of Egypt, was especially helpful. In the decade during which Bertinoro thus controlled the best interests of the Jewish community at Jerusalem, a radical change for the better developed. Shortly after his arrival, he had been compelled upon one occasion to dig a grave because the community had provided no one to perform that labour; a few years later, the community enjoyed the benefits of hospitals, charitable relief societies, and similar associations. His reputation spread widely; not only was he accepted as a rabbinical authority, but the
Muslim population frequently asked him to decide judicial cases. He harshly reproved the rabbis for exacting fees for services at weddings and divorces, believing it their duty to perform religious ceremonies without monetary compensation. ==Works==