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Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (born Abdullah Youssef, 1920 Basra, Iraq) is a Sephardic Haredi rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and recognized halakhic authority. He is the former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and the current spiritual leader of the Shas political party in the Israeli Knesset. He is highly revered in the religious world, especially in the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, for his erudition and Torah scholarship.
Rabbi Yosef's halakhic responsa are highly regarded within Orthodox circles and are considered binding in many Mizrahi communities.
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Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (born Abdullah Youssef, 1920 Basra, Iraq) is a Sephardic Haredi rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and recognized halakhic authority. He is the former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and the current spiritual leader of the Shas political party in the Israeli Knesset. He is highly revered in the religious world, especially in the Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, for his erudition and Torah scholarship.
Rabbi Yosef's halakhic responsa are highly regarded within Orthodox circles and are considered binding in many Mizrahi communities. Rabbi Yosef's responsa are noted for citing almost every source regarding a specific topic and are often referred to simply as indices of all previous rulings.
As spiritual leader of the Shas political party, Rabbi Yosef is seen as a prime mover in improving the status of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the State of Israel. He believes that voting in parliamentary elections and participating in Israeli politics is the key to such improvements. Through his position with Shas, he has become a significant — and controversial — figure in Israeli politics.
Early life
Ovadia Yosef was born in Basra, Iraq, but moved to Jerusalem with his family in 1924, when he was four years old. In his teens, he entered Porat Yosef Yeshiva, where he advanced to the highest shiur taught by the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Ezra Attiya.
A famous story retells how Rabbi Attiya was instrumental in keeping the young Ovadia in the Torah world. At one point, the diligent young scholar suddenly stopped coming to yeshiva for several days. Rabbi Attiya paid a visit to his home and was shocked by the poverty he saw there. Ovadia's father explained that he ran a small grocery and needed the boy to work for him. Rabbi Attiya attempted to convince the father of the importance of Torah learning, to no avail. The next morning, when the father entered his store, he found Rabbi Attiya standing there, wearing a work apron. The rosh yeshiva explained that he had come to the store early that morning when Ovadia was opening up. He had told the youth that he had found a substitute worker who would work without pay, and sent him back to yeshiva. "You said that you needed someone to help and could not afford to pay. I am that someone. Your son's learning is more important than my time!" he told the father, who finally conceded and allowed his son to continue learning in yeshiva.
Ovadia received semicha (rabbinical ordination) at the age of 20. He became long-time friends with Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul, who began his yeshiva career in the same class and who advanced to become rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef in 1983.
In 1947, he was invited to Cairo by Rabbi Aharon Choueka, the founder of yeshiva 'Ahavah VeAchvah', to teach in this yeshiva. Rabbi Yosef also served as head of the Cairo beth din (rabbinical court). After spending three years there, he returned to Israel and served on the rabbinical court in Petah Tikva and later on the court of Jerusalem. He was then appointed to the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals in Jerusalem, eventually becoming the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1968, a position which he held until his election as Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel in 1973.
He currently lives in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Har Nof.
Halakhic authority
Rabbi Yosef is generally considered one of the leading living halakhic authorities, particularly for Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews ("Maran").
Some of his more famous legal rulings include:
- That it is legitimate and permissible to give territory from the Land of Israel in order to achieve a genuine peace. When the Oslo Accords were followed by an intifada, this opinion was later retracted.
- Allowing the wives of Israel Defense Force soldiers who have been missing in action for a long time to remarry, a verdict which is known as "the releasure of agunot" (???? ??????).
- Women should not wear a wig (sheitel) as a form of head covering, but should wear headscarves instead. (According to halakha, Jewish married women should cover their hair in public for reasons of modesty).
Political activity
Government influence
In 1990, Rabbi Yosef used his position as Shas spiritual leader to pressure Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir into agreeing to hold negotiations with Arab states for a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shamir, a member of the Likud Party, refused to make any commitments.
According to one biography of the rabbi, Ben Porat Yosef, the relationship between the two had never been comfortable because of Shamir's unstudious personality. As a way of gaining a character analysis of politicians, Rabbi Yosef had invited both Shamir and Shimon Peres to learn Talmud with him. While Peres proved an engaging and fluid learner, Shamir was stoic toward the material, a trait that led Rabbi Yosef to instead use one of Shamir's cabinet members, Housing and Construction Minister David Levy, as his key partner in dealing with the Likud. Levy had a relatively warm relationship with the rabbi due to his moderate approach to Israel's security and foreign affairs policies, his charismatic personality, and his connection with Sephardi traditions (Levy, a Moroccan, was the highest ranking Sephardi politician in the 1980s).
In 1990, Rav Yosef pulled Shas out of the coalition with the Likud and attempted to form a partnership with Peres's left-centre Labour Party. The bold move, engineered but opposed by Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, backfired when the highly respected Ashkenazi rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Rabbi Elazar Shach (who subsequently founded the Degel HaTorah party) fiercely commanded Rabbi Yosef to return Shas to the coalition with the Likud. During this time, Rabbi Yosef was severely criticised by other major members of the Haredi religious community in Israel, particular the Ashkenazic Jews who generally sided with the Likud and the right in opposition to the perceived secularist tendencies of Labour and the left.
The failure of the scheme, today called the "the dirty trick", or maneuver, was responsible for Peres' downfall as leader of Labour, and his 1991 defeat in internal elections to former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Since the 1980s, Rabbi Yosef has approved the participation by Shas in most Israeli governments, except for the last two governments of Ariel Sharon since January 2003. In the last Knesset, Shas was one of the few parties to have been in the opposition for the duration of that Knesset's term, along with the leftist Meretz party and the Arab factions Ra'am (United Arab List), Hadash, and Balad. This was largely because of the rise of Shinui to the powerful third party position, a position that was previously held by Shas. Shinui demanded to create a government without Shas.
In the 2007 Israeli Presidential election, Rabbi Yosef endorsed his long-time friend Shimon Peres, who ultimately won the election due in part to the support of Shas's 12 MKs.
Cultural influence
In a 2004 article by Maariv, Rabbi Yosef was mentioned as one of the most influential rabbis in Israel. He was described as:
The spiritual leader of Shas. The man most identified with the honorific title maran. He has considerable political strength, mainly because he controls the Knesset members of Shas.
However, the key influence of Rabbi Yossef is in the arena of Judaism, specifically in halakha.
In addition, he has great influence in teaching and endowing of his halakhic way. Jewish prayers according to Yosef's verdicts are the most common in Sephardic synagogues, and his halakhic books gained circulation beyond compare. Almost no one disputes the fact he is a Torah phenomenon, one of a kind. Despite this, he is "field rabbi" and goes down to the common people with countless sermons.
Position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Despite his controversial public comments, Rabbi Yosef has long been a distinguished rabbinical authority advocating peace negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has done so since the late 1980s. His main justification is the halakhic principle of Pikuach Nefesh, in which all the Jewish commandments (excluding adultery, idolatry, and murder) are put on hold if a life is put in danger. Using an argument first articulated by the late American rabbinical leader Joseph Soloveitchik, Rabbi Yosef claims that the Arab-Israeli conflict endangers human lives, thereby meeting the above criteria and overruling the priority of commandments pertaining to settling the land of Israel. Therefore, Israel is permitted — even obligated if saving lives is a definitive outcome — to make serious efforts to reach a peace settlement as well as to make arrangements to properly protect its citizens. Rabbi Yosef first applied the Pikuach Nefesh principle to Israel's conflicts with its neighbors in 1979, when he ruled that this argument granted Israel authority to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Some claimed, however, that the ruling was also motivated by Rabbi Yosef's desire to oppose his Ashkenazi colleague, Rabbi Shlomo Goren.
Using this precedent, Rabbi Yosef instructed Shas to join Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government coalition, and later that of Ehud Barak as well. However, Shas abstained on Oslo I and voted against the Oslo II agreement. Furthermore, as Oslo stalled and relations between Israelis and Palestinians began to deteriorate, and particularly following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Rabbi Yosef and the party pulled "rightward", supporting the Likud.
In 2005, Rabbi Yosef repeatedly condemned the Gaza Disengagement. He argued that he was opposed to any unilateral action that occurred outside the framework of a peace agreement. Rabbi Yosef again cited the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, saying that empowering the Palestinians without a commitment to end terror would result in threatening Jewish lives, particularly in areas near Gaza in range of Qassam rocket attacks. In contrast to some of his rabbinical colleagues, such as Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, Rabbi Yosef refused to entertain the idea of holding a referendum on the disengagement, and instructed his MKs to vote against the plan when it came up in the Knesset.
Rabbi Yosef still maintains that Pikuach Nefesh applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and supports negotiations with the Palestinians. However, he no longer appears totally convinced that diplomacy with the present leadership can necessarily end the violence. Some media analysts have suggested that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may be able to convince the rabbi to sign on to further unilateral actions by the government if concerted efforts toward negotiation fail.
Controversy
Rabbi Yosef frequently delivers radio addresses in which he uses fierce and sharp rhetoric, often combined with curses and ill wishes, directed against political leaders.
Reactions to Rabbi Yosef's "political" quotes have ranged from laughter to fury among more secular Israelis, both in the political sphere and among common citizens. Shas spokespeople and Rabbi Yosef's followers argue that his quotes are taken out of context and that they include technical religious terms which the average person is not familiar with, and therefore, misunderstood. For instance, in April 2001, Rabbi Yosef was widely criticized for what was interpreted as a call for the unconditional annihilation of Arabs, saying, "It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable," and, "The Lord shall return the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world." However, his second comment was in fact a slightly modified quote from Obadiah 1:18, referring to the descendants of Esau. A Shas spokesman defended Rabbi Yosef, saying the speech had been in reference to "Arab murderers and terrorists", not all Arabs, and that the rabbi had been saying that the state of Israel should pursue its enemies mercilessly, as God had commanded the ancient Israelites to fight against their adversaries.
In March 2000, shortly before Purim, Rabbi Yosef attacked then-Education Minister and Meretz Party chairman Yossi Sarid. Yosef referred to Sarid as "the 'Dark Side", a term synonymous in Jewish parlance with the demonic realm of existence. Rabbi Yosef continued, saying, "He is Satan, may his name and memory be erased. How long do we have to suffer this wicked man? God will extirpate him, the way He will extirpate Amalek. Cursed is Haman, cursed is Yossi Sarid. He will be uprooted from the seed of Israel. Just as revenge was wrought on Haman, so it will be wrought on him." Rabbi Yosef was promptly criticized, particularly by non-Orthodox groups such as the Israel Religious Action Center (the legal arm of the Reform movement in Israel) and Hofesh, a secular non-profit organization that fights religious coercion, both of whom called for Rabbi Yosef to be tried for incitement. Rabbi Yosef was also criticized by several MKs and government ministers. Some of Rabbi Yosef's critics argued that the comparison to Haman (whose name Jews are commanded to "blot out" on Purim) constituted a thinly-veiled threat to Sarid's life, and compared the incident with the fiery rhetoric and protests that eventually culminated in Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Rabbi Yosef's assistants and supporters dismissed these interpretations of his speech as politically opportunistic exaggerations, and attempted to counter this move by alleging that Sarid's predecessor in Meretz, Shulamit Aloni, had also committed "wild incitement" when, in response to the Sarid incident, she had referred to the rabbi as "a sort of Roman Emperor Caligula." Rabbi Yosef was investigated by the police, but neither he nor MK Aloni were ever charged by the Israeli Attorney General.
Rabbi Yosef also generated controversy in 2000 when he declared that Prime Minister Ehud Barak has "no sense" because he is trying to make peace with the Palestinians, which he likened to another senseless act, attempting to make peace between a human and an animal such as a "snake", which is motivated by instincts that cannot be overridden, asking, "Will we make peace with a snake?"
In a July 2001 speech, Rabbi Yosef called for Arabs to go to hell: "In the old city of Jerusalem they [Arabs] are swarming like ants. They should go to hell — and the Messiah will speed them on their way."
In March 2005, Rabbi Yosef made comments that have been interpreted as praying for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's death: "Let God strike him down... he is torturing the people of Israel... The Holy One wants us all to return to the Torah, and then he will strike him with one blow and he will die. He will sleep and never wake up." Aides responded to the public outcry by explaining that Rabbi Yosef had been criticizing Sharon's plan for the disengagement from Gaza, not Sharon himself.
Theodicy
Some of Rabbi Yosef's theodicy-related pronouncements have also been controversial. In 2000, he described the Holocaust as God's retribution against the reincarnated soul of Jewish sinners: "The six million Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone." . Shas chairman Eli Yishai said criticism of the rabbi is unjustified, explaining, "Rabbi Ovadia weeps for every Jew who is killed ... but nobody, not even a saint, has not sinned. Everyone dies in a state of sin."
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Rabbi Yosef blamed the tragedy on the Godlessness of New Orleans, on U.S. support for the Gaza disengagement, and on a general lack of Torah study in the area:
"There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, because there isn’t enough Torah study... Black people reside there [New Orleans]. Blacks will study the Torah? [God said], Let’s bring a tsunami and drown them... Hundreds of thousands remained homeless. Tens of thousands have been killed. All of this because they have no God... Bush was behind the [expulsion of] Gush Katif, he encouraged Sharon to expel Gush Katif... We had 15,000 people expelled here [in Israel], and there [in America] 150,000 [were expelled]. It was God’s retribution... God does not short-change anyone."
Part of the controversy surrounding Rabbi Yosef's comments was his use of the Hebrew word "Kushim" to refer to the black people of New Orleans. In modern Hebrew, "Kushim" is considered a racial epithet. One explanation offered for Rabbi Yosef's comments was that since non-Jews (including black Americans) are not required to study the Torah, Rabbi Yosef was suggesting that the Jews of New Orleans were responsible for studying more to make up for the large non-Jewish presence in the area.
Other commentors placed Rabbi Yosef's statement in context with classical Torah views, claiming that Rabbi Yosef's remarks were in accordance with two oft-quoted Talmudic dictums: that whenever one sees a misfortune, he should regard it as a personal message to repent; and, if a person does not know how he has sinned, he should blame it on a lack of Torah study (Berachot 5a). However, those Talmudic guidelines are recorded in reference to Jewish individuals and in the context of assessing one's own misfortunes, not the tragedies of others. Most Rabbinic authorities do not engage in public statements like those of Rabbi Yosef.
Controversial halakhic rulings
Breslov Hasidim have the custom of going on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in Uman forRosh Hashana. Rabbi Yosef has been highly critical of this practice, and has stated, "There are here [in Israel] the tombs of the greatest sages in the world. Holy Tannaim, amongst whom even the least will merit being resurrected. They leave and shame these Geonim by going to Uman."
In 1973, as Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, he ruled that the Ethiopian Beta Israel were to be regarded as Jewish according to Jewish law. However, other leading halakhic authorities such as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach have found their identity as Jews to be suspect.
Assassination attempt
In April 2005, Israeli security services arrested three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who had been observing Rabbi Yosef in public and held on the suspicion of intended murder. One, Musa Darwish, was convicted on 15 December 2005 of Yossef's attempted murder and of throwing firebombs at vehicles on the Jerusalem-Ma'aleh Adumim road. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison and three years probation.
Bibliography
Among Rabbi Yosef's earliest works was a detailed commentary on the Ben Ish Chai. He was asked to finish the commentary Kaf Ha'Chaim by Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer after the author's death. Two sets of Rabbi Yosef's responsa have been published, Yabia Omer and Yechavei Da'ath (both titles are references to Psalm 19). His responsa are noted for citing almost every source regarding a specific topic and are often referred to simply as indices of rulings.
Rabbi Yosef has printed a commentary on the Mishnah tractate Pirkei Avot ("Ethics of the Fathers") under the title, Anaf Etz Avot, and Maor Israel, a commentary on various parts of the Talmud. His son, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, has published a widely-read codification of Rabbi Yosef's rulings entitled Yalkut Yosef. Another son, Rabbi David Yosef, has printed various siddurim and liturgy according to Rabbi Yosef's rulings. He also wrote the Torat HaMoadim, rules about the Jewish holidays, and Halacha Berura, another codification of his rulings, in the style of the famous Mishnah Berura by the Chofetz Chaim but codified for Sephardim.
Secondary Works
- Nitzan Chen and Anshel Pfeffer,
Maran Ovadia Yosef: Habiografia (Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: The Biography): Jerusalem 2004R. Benny Lau, Mimaran ad Maran: Mishnato ha-Hilkhatit shel ha-Rav Ovadiah Yosef (From R. Yosef Karo to R. Ovadiah Yosef: The Halachic Teaching of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef): Tel Aviv 2005Zvi Aloush and Yossi Elituv, Hayyav, Mishnato u-Mahalkhav ha-Politiyim shel ha-Rav Ovadiah Yosef (The Life, Teaching and Political Activities of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef): Or Yehudah 2004Y. Choueka, Pirkei Hayim, a biography of Rabbi Aharon Choueka and his Yeshiva, Ahava VeAchva, in Minhat Aharon, Y. Choueka and Haym Sabato (Eds.), Jerusalem, 1980, 15-32. (Hebrew)Zion Zohar, Oriental Jewry Confronts Modernity-The Case of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, Modern Judaism - Volume 24, Number 2, May 2004, pp. 120-149.
External links
Middle East Review of International Affairs, 4:4, December 2000., from [Netivot Shalom], April 2003., from [Mail.Jewish Mailing List], March 1993.
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