BOTON, ḤIYYA ABRAHAM BEN AARON DI

BOTON, ḤIYYA ABRAHAM BEN AARON DI (17th century), rabbi and Ereẓ Israel emissary. Ḥiyya di Boton was a grandson of abraham b. moses di boton , and apparently studied in Gallipoli under his uncle, meir di boton . In 1648 he was in Smyrna, where he was a member of the bet din of joseph escapa . His only son and his daughters died in an epidemic there (before 1660). Ḥiyya was a friend of Ḥayyim b. Israel Benveniste and corresponded with him as well as with his kinsman moses benveniste . He published Leḥem Rav (Smyrna, 1660), the responsa of his grandfather. Boton was among those who opposed Shabbetai Ẓevi in Smyrna. After 1674 he immigrated to Jerusalem, where he became a member of the bet din of moses galante , dealing particularly with cases of divorce. He went as an emissary of Ereẓ Israel to Turkey and the Balkans and in 1680 was in Belgrade and in Sarejevo. In 1686 he was in Jerusalem, where in 1700 he was appointed chief rabbi, but he died shortly afterward. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Azulai, 1 (1852), 7 no. 25; Frumkin-Rivlin, 2 (1928), 74 no. 15; Yaari, Sheluḥei, 300–12; Scholem, Shabbetai Ẓevi, 1 (1957), 338.