Hacham Joseph Shaltiel, son of Hacham Avram, was born in Salonica. He was Hacham Yehoshua Hacohen Pirhiya's student, and corresponded with Hacham Yitzhak Farchi and Hacham Abraham Paladji, the Turkish sages of his day. Hacham Joseph Shaltiel served in Salonica as dayan, preacher and cantor.
Hacham Joseph Shaltiel lived to an old age and passed away on 30 Nissan, 5623 (1863) in Salonica. His book, Yoseph Avraham, containing sermons on the Five Books of Moses, was printed during his lifetime, in 1852.
People on their deathbed deliver a testament to their children and household that concerns matters of the temporal world, instructing them on how they are to comport themselves concerning material and economic matters. If only they would do as much accounting of the sanctity of the soul, for sometimes death, heaven forbid, strikes before the significant accounting has been done. This is one reason to act in the opposite way, and first hold a major accounting by soul-searching. For in material matters and in business one reviews accounts at every moment, while this is hardly the case concerning the deprived soul…
The Tikun [repair] of this search, soul-searching, is to write one's will while alive, healthy and strong and to instruct one's children and household, as is written concerning Abraham, "that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right".
Yoseph Avraham, p. 237 – 238, Gizei Hamelech Publishing, Jerusalem, 2008
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