ISTRUMSA, ḤAYYIM ABRAHAM

ISTRUMSA, ḤAYYIM ABRAHAM (18th–19th century), rabbi in Greece, born in salonika . He served as rabbi and preacher in Komotini from 1793 to 1801, after which he went to Salonika, preaching mainly in the "Old Castile" and "Old Catalonia" synagogues. Afterward he served as rabbi in the Greek towns of Serres, Larissa, and Kastoria. In 1804 he officiated at the reconsecration of the newly renovated "Old Italian" synagogue in Salonika. Istrumsa was the author of Yerekh Avraham (Salonika, 1815), halakhic rulings and a dissertation on the writing of names in bills of divorce, including the halakhic rulings of his grandfather, Daniel; and Ben Avraham (ibid., 1826), homilies, responsa, and novellae on the Torah and Arba'ah Turim. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M.D. Gaon, Yehudei ha-Mizraḥ be-Ereẓ Yisrael, 2 (1937), 37; Rosanes, Togarmah, 5 (1938), 146. (Simon Marcus)