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Rav Ovadia & Sephardic Pride |
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Written by Peter Hirschberg
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Hundreds of men, many dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and black velvet yarmulkes, sit packed together on thinly padded benches in the Yazdim synagogue in Jerusalem's Bukharan Quarter ready for their post-Shabbat evening entertainment-Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef's weekly Saturday night sermon.
As the rabbi enters, the crowd rises to its feet, singing ecstatically in his honor. He makes his way to a thronelike chair in front of the ark and takes a seat. He waits while another rabbi concludes his sermon, and then launches into an hour-long talk related to the Passover festival, only a few days away. The silence is pierced only by the occasional peal of laughter, elicited by some humorous remark by Yosef.On an elevated platform in the synagogue is a cameraman who is filming the rabbi. This is an integral element in Shas's outreach program. Yosef's sermons are being broadcast live not only to adjacent rooms where the spillover crowd is seated, but to dozens of locations around the country where Shas supporters have gathered, as well as to synagogues and halls in overseas cities like London, Paris, and Tunis. So as not to violate the Sabbath, videotapes are sent to places farther away where the day of rest is still not over, like New York, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City, where they will be screened during the week.What makes Yosef unique is that he is revered by Sephardim beyond the hard-core circle of Shas yeshiva students.
His picture can be seen hanging in the homes and shops of non-Orthodox Sephardim who do not necessarily adhere to his religious rulings. Whereas leading ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbis have confined themselves to the yeshiva, Yosef has preached in synagogues and halls around the country in an effort to reach simple Israelis. For many Sephardim who support Shas, Yosef is a symbol of Sephardi pride, of a golden age when their religious culture was exalted and when they produced rabbis rather than criminals.
When he extols Maimonides as one of the greatest Jewish scholars, he is radiating a clear message to his followers-that there is no reason to feel inferior to Ashkenazim. That theme of ethnic pride is evident in his dress: While the other Shas rabbis wear the black suits and fedoras of the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi world, Yosef sports traditional Sephardi garb: a blue, turban-like hat and a dark, flowing, gold-embroidered robe. His supporters were enraged when rumors emerged that the police planned to question Yosef in connection with an influence-peddling scandal in which [Rabbi] Deri was allegedly involved in 1997. In their eyes this was a mark of secular Israel's contempt for the ultimate symbol of Sephardi culture.Some have accused Yosef of fomenting ethnic division, pointing, for instance, to a ruling he once issued to the effect that Sephardi soldiers should maintain their own style of prayer by praying separately rather than join a service with Ashkenazim. The ruling, though, was almost completely ignored. Yet many of Yosef's rulings have been considered pragmatic, even lenient.
One explanation for this is that, unlike the decisions of the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbis, Yosef's rulings are made not only with his own ultra-Orthodox community in mind but also take into account traditional non-Orthodox Sephardim. His rulings have sometimes been controversial, as when he stated in the mid-1970s that the Ethiopian Jews were fully Jewish, a decision that helped smooth the way for their immigration. He has also ruled against the use of sheitels (head coverings for married women). "That's partly because he sees them as part of a misguided European Orthodox milieu," says Dr. Zvi Zohar, director of the Center for Halakhah of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The ruling that has had the sharpest political impact was Yosef's announcement in the late 1970s-repeated in 1989-that parts of the Land of Israel could be returned to the Arabs if such a move would prevent future wars and save human life. He has also specifically supported territorial compromise on the Golan Heights, and once recommended that Sephardi rabbis be included in Mideast peace talks because they understand the Arab mentality. At the same time, he is no liberal, having referred to Arabs as "a cruel enemy" and as "beasts of prey."(3)
He may not be a politician, but Yosef, who devotes his life to religious study, is one of the leading Torah scholars of his generation, with a phenomenal knowledge of rabbinic responsa and a prolific memory that enables him to cite a diverse list of rabbinic sources, with page numbers, when asked a religious question. His admirers tell how, as a young man living in Jerusalem, he couldn't afford to purchase books and so was often seen in a religious bookstore atop a ladder, scouring the latest rabbinic works. Since he had a photographic memory, they marveled, there was actually no need for him to purchase them. But Yosef did not just accumulate knowledge, he was also able to integrate and apply it. At the extremely young age of 24, for instance, he was already serving as a judge in the Sephardi rabbinical court in Jerusalem. Most crucially, unlike most of the Shas rabbis who came through the Lithuanian yeshivas, Ovadiah studied in the traditional Sephardi day schools in Jerusalem and then in Porath Yosef, the only Sephardi talmudic academy then in the capital.
It was a deep sense of ethnic pride, buttressed by personal injury, that ultimately plunged Yosef into the political sphere. In the Ashkenazi-dominated ultra-Orthodox world he was never afforded the honor many believed he deserved as a leading Torah scholar. He was never invited, for instance, to serve on Agudath Yisrael's Council of Torah Sages, then the preeminent spiritual and political authority in the ultra-Orthodox world and an exclusively Ashkenazi body. In the Ashkenazi yeshiva world some even disparagingly referred to him as "a donkey bearing books," a comment intended to create the impression that he was nothing more than a memorizer of texts.
"They said he was good enough for Sephardim," explained Menachem Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, an expert on ultra-Orthodoxy, "but where did he get the chutzpah to compare himself to Ashkenazi sages?"(4) These slights helped motivate Yosef to set up Shas. But there was an additional insult. After relations between Yosef-who served as Sephardi chief rabbi between 1973 and 1983-and Ashkenazi chief rabbi Shlomo Goren deteriorated, the National Religious Party initiated legislation limiting a chief rabbi to a single term of ten years. As a result, both Yosef and Goren were effectively pushed out of office. Hence, when Yosef gave his blessing to Shas, he was redressing not only a communal humiliation-that suffered by Sephardim in the Agudath Yisrael-dominated ultra-Orthodox world-but also a personal one: Shas would challenge not only Agudath Yisrael but also the National Religious Party.
1. Jerusalem Report, May 30, 1996.2. Ibid., June 12, 1997.3. Ibid., Oct. 8, 1992.4. Ibid.
Excerpted from The World of Shas by Peter Hirschberg. Originally published on SephardicCouncil.org
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Comments
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I live in Israel ,and I know about the problems between sepharadim and Ashkenazim, but its no where near how peter makes to be, and its much worse in the non religious circles, I know of many Ashekenazi Ultra Ortodox Rabbis that hold Harav Ovadia to be the Biggest Sage of our generation. and Also its not correct to call the sepharadim criminals
Posted by Shemuel, on Wednesday, 31 January 2007 at 11:04
I don't know where Peter Hirschberg (the author) is going with this: 'For many Sephardim who support Shas, Yosef is a symbol of Sephardi pride, of a golden age when their religious culture was exalted and when they produced rabbis rather than criminals' When were Sepharadim (as a whole) criminals? That sounds like an unfair generalization to me. He may be taking a cheap shot at R' Ariyeh Deri, can't be sure. I am not making any allegations here just thinking out loud. I know all of this is besides the point in this excerpt, but it would have been just as effective with out him referring to us as criminals.
Posted by Daniel Braum, on Thursday, 16 November 2006 at 7:27
Rav Ovadia serves as an example to all of us...Sepharadi,Persian,Mizrachi..of how we should be proud of who we are, our traditions, and approach to Jewish life, and how we have much to offer the rest of the Jewish community.
Posted by Reuven, on Wednesday, 27 September 2006 at 3:53
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