Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement. He was born in Baghdad in 1920 and came to Jerusalem at the age of four. In 1945, he was appointed as a judge on the Sephardic rabbinical court in Jerusalem. In 1947 he was elected head
of the rabbinical court in Cairo and deputy chief rabbi of Egypt.
Following the creation of the State of Israel, Yosef was appointed to the Petah Tikva rabbinical court and later to the court in Jerusalem. In 1965 he was appointed to the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals in the capital and in 1968 was named Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. In 1973 he became Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and in 1984 spiritual mentor to Shas.
Considered a prolific writer on questions of Jewish law, Yosef published his first work at the age of 18. He was awarded the Israel Prize for Torah Literature in 1970 in recognition of both the quality and quantity of his work.
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