BICOM

The Israeli media is this morning dominated by the death of 93-year-old Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, as the public and commentators begin to grapple with his legacy.

Rabbi Yosef was best known as the founder of the Shas movement but was widely viewed as a spiritual and rabbinic giant of his generation. Born in Baghdad in 1920, he went on to serve as Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Tel Aviv and of Israel from 1972-83. Several of his religious rulings are considered landmark, daring judgements. These include his confirmation that the Jews of Ethiopia are authentically Jewish, paving their way to emigrate to Israel. Significantly, Rabbi Yosef also ruled that it is religiously permissible to cede portions of Israeli land if the resulting situation is likely to save lives. This allowed Shas to support the government of Yitzhak Rabin, which brokered the Oslo Peace Accords. Writing in Maariv, Shalom Yerushalmi noted that Israelis from all walks of life attended yesterday’s funeral and called Rabbi Yosef “the religious arbiter of this generation.”

Rabbi Yosef was also the figurehead of Israel’s Sephardi community and is widely credited with bringing a strong public voice to Israelis originating from North African and Middle Eastern countries, many of whom had felt downtrodden by the Ashkenazi (European) Israeli elite. As a result, he wielded huge influence among Israel’s Sephardi Jews who religious and secular alike have been the bedrock of support for Shas, which Rabbi Yosef founded in the 1980s.

Although it currently finds itself in opposition, Shas has been a mainstay of Israeli governments since the 1990s. In addition to its political activities, the Shas movement has developed a huge network of schools and welfare programmes in the Sephardi community. However, Shas has no clear successor is in place and Yediot Ahronot’s Nahum Barnea wonders “about the ability of the party’s leadership to work together without the charismatic force of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.”