1920 CE–2013 CE · ACH · Jerusalem
R. Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) was the spiritual leader of Sephardi Jewry in the modern era. Born in Baghdad and raised in Jerusalem from age four, he served as a dayan in Cairo, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before becoming the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983.
His life project — captured in the phrase 'le-hachzir atarah le-yoshnah' (to restore the crown to its former place) — was to re-anchor Sephardi practice in the rulings of Maran R. Yosef Karo and the great Sephardi poskim, rather than in the Ashkenazi customs that had drifted into Israeli Sephardi communities. In 1984 he founded the Shas political party, transforming Sephardi religious and political life in Israel. His responsa span every area of halacha, from kashrut and Shabbat to the most sensitive modern questions of medicine, agunot, and the IDF.
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Born in Baghdad to a family of Torah scholars, originally named Abdullah Yusuf in Arabic.
Baghdad in the modern era remained home to one of the Middle East's oldest and most culturally rich Jewish communities, even as the wider world convulsed with emancipation, nationalism, and catastrophe. Under Ottoman rule through the nineteenth century and then British mandate after World War I, Iraqi Jews—numbering around 150,000 by the twentieth century's mid-point—enjoyed relative security and prosperity, dominating trade and serving as merchants, money-changers, and professionals. The community maintained vibrant yeshivas where traditional Babylonian Jewish learning flourished, and Hebrew printing presses produced works that circulated throughout the Levantine world. Yet this stability proved fragile: growing Arab nationalism, the founding of Israel in 1948, and subsequent Arab-Israeli wars ignited violent upheaval. Massive Jewish emigration followed, with over 100,000 Iraqi Jews airlifted to Israel between 1950 and 1952 in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. The storied Jewish quarter, once filled with synagogues and study halls stretching back centuries, emptied within a generation. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, born in Baghdad in 1920, carried this heritage of Iraqi Jewry with him into his monumental career as a leading Sephardic halakhic authority and spiritual guide to hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide.
Major Mizrahi center; home of Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai).
Jerusalem · 1954
Ten-volume monumental responsa work, ranging across all sections of Shulchan Aruch. Considered the defining halachic encyclopedia of modern Sephardi pesak and a touchstone for poskim worldwide.
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Jerusalem · 1976
Six-volume responsa collection on practical halacha, written in accessible style for the broader public.
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Jerusalem · 1991
Multi-volume comprehensive halachic treatment of the festivals — Pesach, Sukkot, Yamim Noraim, Purim, and more — and other discrete halachic topics, written in his last decades.
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Jerusalem · 1998
Commentary on R. Chaim Yosef David Azulai's Birkei Yosef, distilling Sephardi halachic methodology.
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