Ovadia Yosef

Ovadia Yosef (24 September 1920 – 7 October 2013) was an Iraqi-born Israeli rabbinical authority, halakhic decisor, and political figure renowned as a leading Sephardi Torah scholar and the founder of the Shas political party. Born in Baghdad to a religious Jewish family, he immigrated to British Mandate Palestine at age four, where he immersed himself in Talmudic studies from a young age, receiving semicha (rabbinic ordination) by 20.

Yosef's scholarly output was prodigious, authoring over 50 volumes of halakhic responsa, including the influential Yabia Omer series, which addressed contemporary issues through rigorous application of Sephardi traditions often overlooked in Ashkenazi-dominated rabbinic circles. He ascended to prominent judicial roles, serving as a dayan in Jerusalem, deputy chief rabbi in Cairo, and ultimately as Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi (Rishon LeZion) from 1973 to 1983, during which he advocated for Sephardic equality within Israel's religious establishment. In 1984, disillusioned with the marginalization of Sephardic Jews, he established Shas as a vehicle to restore "the crown to its ancient glory," mobilizing Mizrahi voters on platforms of Torah education, social welfare, and resistance to secular and Ashkenazi elitism, transforming it into a kingmaker in Israeli coalitions.

Ovadia Yosef was born on September 24, 1920, in Baghdad, Iraq, to Yaakov Ben Ovadia, a rabbi and hazan known for composing piyyutim, and his wife Gorgia (also known as Georgia or Yaffa). The family lived in poverty yet maintained a home steeped in Torah study and devotion to religious scholars, reflecting the values of Baghdad's longstanding Jewish community, which traced its roots to the Babylonian exile and numbered approximately 90,000 residents in the city during the 1920s.

As the eldest of eight children in a devout Sephardi household, Yosef received early exposure to traditional Iraqi Jewish customs, including distinctive liturgical practices and halakhic interpretations that emphasized leniency and adherence to ancestral minhagim, influences that would shape his later scholarly preferences. This environment, amid a community that enjoyed economic integration and civic participation under the British Mandate established in 1921, fostered his initial religious formation before rising Arab nationalist sentiments began straining intercommunal relations in the region.

In 1924, at the age of four, Ovadia Yosef immigrated with his family from Baghdad, Iraq, to British Mandate Palestine, settling in Jerusalem's Beit Yisrael neighborhood to provide him with superior opportunities for Torah study under prominent Sephardi scholars, as local religious education in Iraq had become limited. His father, Yaakov Yosef, a modest grocer, sought to immerse the boy in the rigorous environment of Eretz Yisrael's yeshivas amid declining traditional scholarship in Baghdad.