Born in Baghdad, Yosef in 1984 founded Shas, an Orthodox Sephardi political party. He exerted authority within the party and backed government funding for the poor and Orthodox. He served as the chief rabbi of Cairo and Tel Aviv before becoming the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel in 1973. He ruled that Ethiopia’s Beta Israel were Jewish and said it was acceptable to cede part of the Land of Israel to achieve peace.
Photo: Alloni, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons