Revered rabbi’s death stirs up Israeli politics
Jerusalem • To his supporters, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was a revered spiritual sage who empowered masses of disenfranchised Sephardic Jews. Among secular Israelis, he was widely perceived as a medieval figure, bedecked in flowing robes and occasionally given to bizarre rants.
But through his control of the Shas political party, Rabbi Yosef wielded influence over all Israelis. His death Monday leaves a gaping hole that could see the party splinter, reshaping Israeli politics yet again.
Rabbi Yosef, a religious scholar and spiritual leader of Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern descent, spent his lifetime transforming the downtrodden Sephardic community into a potent political force. Yet the 93-year-old rabbi left no clear successor, raising questions about the future of Shas.
“We’ve been left orphans,” the party’s political leader, Aryeh Deri, wailed at a funeral ceremony Monday evening. “We have no father. We have no leader.”
Rabbi Yosef ’s death set off a tremendous wave of public mourning. Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of religious neighbourhoods after his death, crying, chanting prayers for the dead and tearing their clothes in a show of grief.
His funeral brought large parts of Jerusalem to a standstill. Police said more than 700,000 people attended, making it the largest funeral in the country’s history. A black-clad sea of mourners engulfed the van carrying Rabbi Yosef ’s body to the cemetery, preventing it from moving as dozens of security men pushed the crowd back.
Rabbi Yosef was often called the outstanding rabbinical authority of the century for the community of Sephardic — or Mizrahi — Jews, those of Middle Eastern ancestry.
Born in Baghdad in 1920, Rabbi Yosef was four years old when his family moved to Jerusalem. His exceptional abilities and rebellious nature emerged early.
As a student, he chafed under the strict rule of his European rabbinical instructors, writing conflicting opinions based on Sephardic tradition while still a teenager.
His insistence that Sephardic tradition is as valid as the Ashkenazi — or European — version of Judaism spawned a religious and cultural awakening. Sephardic Jews make up roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population, but the community was long impoverished and faced discrimination by Ashkenazi Jews, who traditionally dominated government and religious institutions.
Rabbi Yosef came to national prominence when he served as Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi from 1972 to 1983. While he was revered by his followers, his critics charged that he exacerbated tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Israelis.
His outfit — a gold-trimmed black cape and upswept hat — combined with his ever-present dark glasses and habitually slurred speech, made him an easy target for caricaturists. He would greet visitors, whether they were simple followers or prime ministers, with a playful slap to the face.
Rabbi Yosef parlayed his religious authority into political power, founding Shas in the early 1980s.
It gathered just four seats in the 120-seat parliament in its first election, in 1984. But at its peak, Shas won 17 seats in 1999, making it the thirdlargest party. Even after being hit by scandals, it remained a mid-sized party that delivered a string of prime ministers their parliamentary majority. Shas currently has 11 seats and sits in the opposition.
Rabbi Yosef ’s influence reached beyond the party, and he was known for fierce statements that offended widely disparate segments of society, including Holocaust survivors, gays, Palestinians and secular Jews.
The rabbi said during a sermon in August 2010 that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should “perish from the world” and described Palestinians as “evil, bitter enemies of Israel.” He later apologized, and on Monday, Mr. Abbas expressed his condolences over Rabbi Yosef ’s death.