Rabbi Prof. Meir Benayahu was a prolific Jewish scholar and manuscript collector. He was born in 1926 to Victoria and Isaac Nissim (1896-1981), a Baghdadi scholar who had immigrated with his wife to Israel in 1925 and served as Rishon le-Tzion, Chief Rabbi of Israel, from 1955 to 1972. Benayahu published extensively on subjects relating to early modern Jewish history, and his legacy includes a biography of Isaac Luria (1534-1572) and studies on the 18th-century cabalists Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-47) and Hayyim Joseph David Azulai (1724-1806), among others.
Together with Israel's second president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (1884-1963), Benayahu founded the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities of the East, having also collaborated to acquire its remarkable library. The Ben-Zvi Institute academic journal, Sefunot, was jointly edited by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Benayahu until its 7th edition; from then on, the latter was the sole editor. Furthermore, he established the Yad Ha-Rav Yitzhak Nissim, an institution devoted to disseminating research on the history of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. He also created the journal Assufot, which published several of his books and articles.
Benayahu passed away in Jerusalem on April 26, 2009.