Rabbi Yehuda Moshe Yeshua Fatiyah was born in Baghdad on 2 Shevat 5619 (1859), the son of Rabbi Moshe ben Rabbi Yeshua. He studied at the Midrash Talmud Torah and then at the Beit Zilkha yeshiva, and as a child listened to the sermons of the Ben Ish Chai. A diligent prodigy, he received semicha at seventeen from Rabbi Abdallah Somekh. Drawn early to Kabbalah, he studied it under the Ben Ish Chai, whose chief disciple he became, and under Chacham Shimon Agassi.

He prayed at the Yitzchak Chaim synagogue, where he chose to sit among the poor and simple folk rather than in the place of honour due to him. Famous throughout Baghdad, even among non-Jews, he was known simply as "Chacham Yehuda"; the Ben Ish Chai himself sent him the sick so that he would write amulets for them. After the First World War he was the spiritual leader of Babylonian Jewry.

He was known for his ability to free people possessed by spirits (dybbuks) and to communicate with the souls of the dead in order to help them find their rectification. He recorded many of these experiences in his book Minchat Yehuda. His major work, Beit Lechem Yehuda, is the authoritative commentary on Etz Chaim of the Arizal and Rabbi Chaim Vital; he also wrote Yayin HaReKach on the Idrot of the Zohar. He prayed with the kavanot of the Rashash.

He settled in Jerusalem at the end of his life, passed away there on 27 Av 5702 (1942) and rests on the Mount of Olives.