Massive funeral for a great rabbi

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, one of the greatest halachic, Torah and Talmudic minds of our generation, passed away on Monday at the age of 93 in Jerusalem.

Police reported that as many as 800,000 attended his funeral that evening, ten percent of the population of Israel. The funeral procession inched along the streets of Jerusalem, through the crush of mourners, from Yeshivat Porat Yosef, where the Rav had attended school as a youth and eulogies were delivered, to his burial at the Sanhedria cemetery.

“It’s a tremendous loss,” said Rabbi Yitzhak Simantov of Congregation Shaare Emunah, the Sephardic Congregation of the Five Towns on Oakland Avenue in Cedarhurst. “We saw the unity. All the gedolim (leading rabbis) closed the yeshivot, they sent the kollelim to the levaya.”

The mourners reflected a cross section of Israeli society, from charedi to secular, since his rulings and teachings touched many. He is survived by ten children, one the current Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. He was buried next to his wife, Margalit, who passed away at age 67 in 1994.

Rabbi Yosef was born in Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 23, 1920, the day after Yom Kippur. He immigrated to Jerusalem, then under British rule, at age four with his family. He excelled in his studies and received smicha (rabbinical ordination) at age 20.

After he married, he was invited to teach at a yeshiva in Cairo and headed the rabbinical court. He returned to the new State of Israel three years later and served on the rabbinical court in Petah Tikva.

To much acclaim, in 1952 he published the first of many books on Jewish law, “Chazon Ovadia,” on the laws of Pesach. He founded yeshivot for the Sephardic community, served on rabbinical courts, and authored many books on responsa (rabbinical rulings) and halacha (Jewish law). He became Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1968 and Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel (Rishon Letzion) from 1973 to 1983. He founded the Sephardic Shas political party in 1982 and, for the rest of his life, was its spiritual leader.

Rabbi Simantov of Cedarhurst recounted that as a child he saw Rav Yosef, and again when he was learning in Israel and later when Rav Yosef spoke in Deal, NJ.

Simantov learned Sephardi customs and pronunciation from his parents, who are from Afghanistan. When he learned at Mir in Jerusalem, he would go to the Bait Knesset Yazdim (named for the city of Yaz in Iran) where Rav Yosef would present a Motzai Shabbat shiur (Saturday night class) that grew in popularity and was eventually broadcast live in Israel and Europe.

“It was mostly halacha,” he recalled. “The end was 15 minutes of musar (ethics) on the parasha (weekly Torah portion). His main influence was on the Jewish community to try to teach every man, woman and child halacha. His main shiurim (classes) were always halacha l’maaseh (practical Jewish law).”

“He would go into the topic and explain, so clear even a four year old could understand. He would go into the background — Rishonim (rabbis of the 11th to the 15th centuries CE, prior to the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) and the Acharonim (rabbis after the writing of the Shulchan Aruch). Even as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, he would run from city to city, town to town, to convince parents — shoemakers, carpenters, painters —they came to learn at his shiurim— to send their children to yeshivot.”

He stressed the importance of Sepharadim knowing their own tradition and that they “have to follow their own customs. We go according to our Sepharadi poskim (Jewish legal decisors) and [we] should not give up [our] heritage.” Rav Yosef had said that it was OK to go to Ashkenaz (European-style) yeshivot, explained Simantov, but due to the difference in prayers and customs, “make your own minyan on Rosh Hashana, Kippur and Zachor.”

Simantov explained that Sepharadim eat Bait Yosef meat, a level of Glatt that is more machmir (stringent) than the Rema (Rav Moshe Isserles, Ashkenazic decisor whose addendums to the Sephardic leaning Shulchan Aruch highlight the Ashkenazic customs), following Rabbi Yosef Caro, mechaber (codifier) of the Shulchan Aruch. When it became known that the Sepharadi bochurim (students) in Ponevitch Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Israel stopped eating meat, this convinced the administration to have Bait Yosef meat there for them, Simantov recounted. Rav Ovadia was also makpid (careful) on kemach yoshon (old wheat) and was against the wearing of wigs, preferring that women wear hats.

Rav Yosef wrote more than 100 books, mostly on halacha and written in Hebrew in a way that anyone could understand. “He felt that one of the most important things was bringing Sepharadi halacha out and available for people to follow,” Simantov said.

He recalled Rav Yosef’s radio show in Israel, Pinat Hahalacha (Jewish law corner), that answered questions on practical Jewish law submitted by anyone. “He spoke very clearly,” he remembered, “anybody could understand.” He unified the Sepharadim — Syrian, Persian, Moroccan — who had different minhagim (customs), but he taught them to follow Rav Yosef Caro, the Bait Yosef of the Shulchan Aruch, especially in Eretz Yisrael because that was where he was the posek (halachic decisor.)

“There is not one Sepharadi rabbi who doesn’t use his sefarim (religious books),” Simantov said. “Almost any questions on halacha he has in his books. He clarified any practical law.”

Simantov oberserved Rav Yosef at different times before mincha where he picked up something to learn in the brief moments when he was waiting for the prayers to begin. “He was known not to waste a second.”

“It was not just his encyclopedic knowledge but he brought down practically every source, some [of whom people] never heard of. Everybody used his seforim, Ashkenaz too.”

“He wrote in a poetic way,” he said. “When he proved a point he wrote ‘vhinay kamah alumati vgam nitzavah’,” restating the words of the first Yosef “and my sheaf arose and stood erect’”[explaining what Yosef saw in his dream in Beraishit]. “His handwriting was beautiful, like art.”

May his memory be for a blessing.

Rav Yosef’s Ahavat Yisrael

Recounted by one of Rav Yosef’s sons:

At age 79, Rav Ovadia had his first heart attack and the doctors said that he needed immediate bypass surgery. He asked to defer the surgery for three hours so he could return home first. His family begged him to first do the surgery, but Rav Ovadia insisted.

He said that he was in the midst of writing an answer to a question for an agunah (a woman whose husband is missing and who does not have a Jewish bill of divorce and is thus not free to remarry). Since he did not know how and when he would come out of the surgery, he said that he worried that if he did not first halachically free the agunah to marry, who would do so, who would care about her predicament?

He returned home to complete the written explanation of the Jewish legal reasons why this woman was free to marry. Only then did he return to the hospital for his surgery.