RISHON LE-ZION

RISHON LE-ZION (Heb. רִאשׁוֹן לְצִיּוֹן; "first of Zion"), a title given to the Sephardi head of the rabbis of Israel. His seat is in Jerusalem. The first scholar to be given the title was apparently moses b. jonathan galante (1620–89) when he and the other scholars of Jerusalem decided that their leader should bear the modest title of rishon le-Zion, mentioned in Isaiah (41:27), and not rabbi or av bet din. Until 1840 the authority of the ḥakham bashi ("chief rabbi") in Constantinople extended over all the communities of the Ottoman Empire, including Ereẓ Israel. From that year until 1920, the rishon le-Zion was granted the additional title of ḥakham bashi for Ereẓ Israel by the Ottoman government. The first to bear this double title was Ḥayyim Abraham Gagin . However, the grant of this additional title was not always made immediately on appointment. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Luncz, in: Yerushalayim, 4 (1892), 210–7: Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 57f.; Gaon, in: Mizraḥ u-Ma'arav, 2 (1928), 29–36; Elmaleh, in: Talpioth, 9 (1964), 364–6; idem, Ha-Rishonim le-Ẓiyyon (1970); Hirschberg, in: Yad Yosef Yiẓḥak Rivlin (1964), 94–101. RISHPON RISHPON (Heb. רִשְׁפּוֹן), moshav in central Israel N. of herzliyyah . Rishpon was founded in 1936, in the framework of the Thousand Families Settlement Project (see israel , State of: Settlement), by immigrants from Eastern Europe. In 1970 Rishpon had 447 inhabitants, increasing to 540 in the mid-1990s and 794 in 2002 after expansion. Its economy was based on citrus groves, fruit plantations, flowers, vegetables, poultry and horse stables. The name is assumedly historical, and appears in the form "Rishponah" in an inscription of Tiglath Pileser III dating back to the year 732 B.C.E. It may be connected with the Canaanite deity Reshef. (Efraim Orni)