Rabbi Ovadia Yosef הרב עובדיה יוסף
Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who restored the authority of the Sephardi tradition
Rav Ovadia Yosef was born in Baghdad in 5681; his family moved to Jerusalem when he was four. He grew up poor, and rabbis had to persuade his father to leave the boy in the yeshiva rather than take him into the shop. His memory was almost incredible: he held thousands of sources with exact citations.
He served as rabbi of Cairo, then Sephardi chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, and from 5733 to 5743 as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. His principle: Sephardi communities should return to the rulings of Rabbi Yosef Karo rather than follow local stringencies and Ashkenazi custom — «restore the crown to its former glory».
He ruled boldly where others refused: he recognised the Ethiopian Beta Israel as Jews, and freed hundreds of widows of soldiers missing in the Yom Kippur War to remarry. In 5744 he backed the founding of Shas, which became the political force of Mizrahi Jewry. He died in 5774; some eight hundred thousand people came to his funeral.