JERUSALEM — To his supporters, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was a revered spiritual sage who empowered masses of disenfranchised Sephardic Jews. Among secular Israelis, he was widely perceived as a medieval figure, bedecked in flowing robes and occasionally given to bizarre rants.
But through his control of the Shas political party, Yosef wielded influence over all Israelis. His death Monday leaves a gaping hole that could see the party splinter, reshaping Israeli politics yet again.
Yosef, a religious scholar and spiritual leader of Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern descent, spent his lifetime transforming the downtrodden Sephardic community into a potent political force. Yet the 93-year-old rabbi left no clear successor, raising questions about the future of Shas.
“We’ve been left orphans,” the party’s political leader, Aryeh Deri, wailed at a ceremony Monday evening.
Yosef’s funeral brought large parts of Jerusalem to a standstill. Police said some 700,000 people attended, making it the largest funeral in the country’s history.
At its peak, Shas won 17 seats in the Israeli parliament in 1999 It delivered a string of prime ministers their parliamentary majority. Shas currently has 11 seats and sits in the opposition.
In the process, Shas won hundreds of millions of dollars of government funding for schools, charities and religious seminaries.
