Having no sons, 16th-century Rabbi Shmuel Barazani selected Osnat, his brilliant and pious daughter, and groomed her for a life of avodas Hashem. She was renowned for her Torah wisdom, and Jews and non-Jews alike sought her aid and benefited from her miraculous powers of healing.
Mosul the city in Kurdistan where Osnat was born is located on the west bank of the Tigris river opposite the ancient city of Nineveh. In 1590 when Osnat was born Mosul had a thriving Jewish community of which her father Shmuel Barazani was a prominent rabbi.
The surname Barazani is derived from the name of the region — Barazan Kurdistan where this family seems to have originated. Osnat’s paternal grandfather Rabbi Netanel HaLevi Barazani was a prominent dayan and scion of the most prestigious rabbinic family in Kurdistan. He owned a large library of books and manuscripts — a rare phenomenon in those days.
Legends abound about him and his son Rabbi Shmuel HaLevi Barazani but the bare facts are impressive enough. “Any community that does not have a beit medrash is as if it has no G-d” he was known to say. And indeed Rabbi Shmuel ben Netanel HaLevi Barazani established yeshivos all over Kurdistan — including those in Barazan Akrah Mosul and Amadiyeh and his disciples filled positions of Torah leadership in many Jewish communities.
Although many kabbalistic seforim written by Rabbi Shmuel Barazani have been lost among his manuscripts that have survived are Avnei Zikaron on the laws of shechitah Sefer HaIyun Sefer Derishot and Sefer Charuzot. A number of his piyyutim and special Yom Tov tefillos have been incorporated into the liturgy of Kurdish Jewry.
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