Chalom Messas (Hebrew: שלום משאש) was born in Meknes, Morocco in 1913. He was the son of Rabbi Mimoun Messas and his wife, Rachel. Chalom Messas attended an Alliance Israélite Universelle school. He was a promising Torah prodigy at a very young age, and was a leading student of Morocco's Chief Rabbi Yehoshua Berdugo. The Messas family is an old one, with roots deep within Spain and Portugal.