Rabbi Ephraim ben Yisrael Enkaoua, the "Rab" of Tlemcen, was born in 5114 (1354) in Toledo, Spain. His father, Rabbi Yisrael Enkaoua, author of Menorat HaMaor, was burned at the stake holding a Torah scroll during the persecutions of 5151 (1391). Gifted with exceptional intelligence and memory, he first studied with his father and was then sent as a youth to Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona (the Ran), also regarded as the teacher of the great Rishonim of Algeria of his generation, such as the Rivash. He was at once a rabbi, physician, liturgical poet and philosopher.

After the massacres of 1391 he fled Spain like many of his brethren. From then on he mourned that destruction and took upon himself a life of asceticism. After two years of wandering he reached Marrakesh in 1393, where he was honored with delivering sermons, then Honein, where he served as dayan, before settling in Tlemcen, Algeria. According to tradition, having refused to continue with a caravan on Shabbat, he spent Shabbat alone in the forest, where a lion came to lie beside him "like a dog lying next to its master"; after Shabbat he entered the city riding the lion, with a snake serving as reins. It is also told that he cured the ruler's daughter of an incurable illness and in return obtained for the Jews the right to live within the city itself.

In Tlemcen he served as rabbi and dayan for nearly forty years, until his death, founding religious institutions, rabbinical courts and a synagogue that bears his name. Rabbi Yeshua HaLevi, author of Halichot Olam, sat on his court. His authority extended throughout Algeria, and his contemporaries called him simply "the Rab," a title that remained his for generations. He also faced opposition: in the case of the "yevamah of Taza," his permission for levirate marriage stirred a sharp polemic, and he wrote to the Rashbatz to justify his ruling. Like the Rambam and the Rashbatz, he studied medicine and was personal physician to the ruler of Tlemcen. The Chida writes of him: "a great rabbi in the city of Tlemcen, versed in miracles, outstanding in piety and holiness."

Works: Shaar Kevod Hashem, written in reply to a question from his son Rabbi Yisrael, in which he defends the Rambam against the Ramban's critiques in Shaar HaGemul; piyyutim, including "Adon Olam asher naaleita" and an Aramaic poem that entered the Yom Kippur liturgy of the Jews of Algiers; part of his responsa is lost.

He passed away on Motzaei Shabbat, 1 Kislev 5202 (November 4, 1442), according to Rabbi Avraham Gavison, author of Omer HaShikchah; the title "Rab" (ר"ב) is said to recall the numerical value of the year of his death, 202. His tomb in Tlemcen, near a spring in which he used to immerse himself, became a holy site for Jews and Muslims alike and one of the greatest pilgrimage sites of North African Jewry, until the departure of Algeria's Jews in 1962. His hillula is held on 1 Kislev, and he is also remembered on Lag BaOmer.