Rabbi Ezra Attiya was born in Aleppo, Syria, on Tu BiShvat 5645 (1885), the son of Rabbi Yitzchak and Leah, both from rabbinic families. His parents had lost several children in infancy; his mother went to pray at the synagogue of Ezra the Scribe in Tadef and vowed that if she had a son she would name him Ezra and dedicate him to Torah. As a child he studied in Aleppo under Rabbi Yehuda (Atzlan) Attiya, who foresaw his greatness.

At sixteen he moved with his family to Jerusalem's Old City. His father died soon after, leaving a penniless widow; true to his mother's vow, while she worked as a domestic servant, young Ezra devoted himself entirely to study, sometimes eating and sleeping on a bench in the beit midrash. In 1907 he entered the Ohel Moed yeshiva, later Porat Yosef, then headed by Rabbi Raphael Shlomo Laniado and Rabbi Yosef Yedid HaLevi, where he was regarded as a prodigy.

He led Porat Yosef, the foremost Sephardic yeshiva in Jerusalem, for forty-five years. He opened a new era for Sephardic Jewry, whose influence had waned: his ideal was to restore the full prestige of the Sephardic sages. He trained generations of scholars who became the leaders of the Sephardic world, among them Rav Ovadia Yosef, Rav Ben Zion Abba Shaul and Rav Yehuda Tzadka.

He passed away on 19 Iyar 5730 (1970) and rests in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem.