הרב יצחק יוסף

Rav Yitzchak Yosef (born 18 Tevet 5712/16 January 1952) is the Rishon LeTzion and a member of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, and served as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 5774/2013 until 5784/2024. He was born in Shikun Chabad in Yerushalayim, the sixth son of Rav Ovadia Yosef, the Maran and gadol hador of Sefaradim. At twelve he began his learning in the yeshiva ketanah of Porat Yosef in the Katamon neighborhood of Yerushalayim; from there he went on to Yeshivat HaNegev in Netivot and then to Yeshivat Chevron in Yerushalayim, where he drew close to Rav Betzalel Zolty.

In 5731/1971, at about nineteen, he brought out Piskei Dinim — Yalkut Yosef, which gathered the rulings his father had published until that year; it was arranged with his father’s encouragement and under his supervision, and is counted among his father’s own sefarim. In 5733/1973, when his father was chosen as Rishon LeTzion, the two of them founded the beit midrash for the training of rabbanim and dayanim, “Chazon Ovadia.” In 5735/1975 he was appointed rav of the moshavim Bar Giora, Nes Harim and Mata near Yerushalayim. He received semicha in 5740/1980 from the Chief Rabbis — his father and Rav Shlomo Goren. In 5752/1992 he opened Yeshivat Chazon Ovadia at his father’s instruction and headed it until his election to the Chief Rabbinate.

On 17 Av 5773 he was elected Chief Rabbi with sixty-eight votes, and on 12 Tishrei 5774 he was crowned Rishon LeTzion in the traditional ceremony at the Yochanan ben Zakkai shul in the Old City of Yerushalayim; his son Rav Rachamim took his place at the head of Yeshivat Chazon Ovadia. In 5776/2016 he was appointed president of Yeshivat Porat Yosef, as every Rishon LeTzion is, until the close of his term in 2024; in November of that year he was appointed a member of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah of Shas. In psak he holds to his father’s way — that the task of a rav is not to forbid but to be meikil so far as can be done without touching the mesorah and the truth of the halacha — and rules in the main according to Rav Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch.

The Yalkut Yosef began as a collection of his father’s rulings from Yechaveh Da’at, Yabia Omer and Chazon Ovadia; after some ten volumes he began to take up halachot his father had not addressed, among them questions arising from new technology. Beside it he brought out the siddur Chazon Ovadia in 5748/1988; Otzar Dinim LaIsha VeLaBat; Issur VeHeter, for which he received the Rav Toledano prize for Torah literature; and Ein Yitzchak in three volumes on the rules of psak. In 5784/2024 he was awarded the Israel Prize for Torah literature for the Yalkut Yosef, which runs to more than forty volumes of halacha on the order of the Shulchan Aruch and has been translated into four languages.