Who Was Maran? Understanding The Life Of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Z"L
Bringing The World Of Maran To Life Online
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Bringing The World Of Maran To Life Online
The Moreshet Maran Center website operated by the Maran Heritage Center is actually the English language version of the great content website in Hebrew “Maran Heritage” – the great content portal about Maran Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZIA.
In the first phase, the website serves as an English-language promotional website for the association’s activities, and the ambition is to raise resources and volunteers through it to further develop the center’s international department, to produce content dealing with Maran’s heritage and teachings also for speakers of different languages, and to create a huge content archive in the English language (and in other languages as well) , such as our website in Hebrew.
You can learn more by reading Maran’s biography below…
Maran entered the Porat Yosef Yeshiva at the age of 10, and that year he traveled to Iraq again with his father, who went there for trading purposes. At the age of thirteen, Maran’s Bar Mitzvah celebration was held in the Synagogue over the grave of Shimon Ha’Tzadik in Jerusalem, the tefillin were written for him by Rabbi Tzadok Chuchin.
Maran finished high school the first time at the age of 15, and the second time at the age of nineteen, to study the entire Rashi and Tosafot.
At the age of 17, he began to teach classes under the instruction of Rabbi Maran, the head of the Yeshiva HaGaon Rabbi Ezra Atiya Zelha – the head of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva.
His well-known series of books is “Yebya Omer” numbering eleven volumes.
At the age of 24, Maran married Rebbitzin Margalit A.H., the daughter of the pious genius Rabbi Abraham Fatal, Z”l.
On one of the days, Rabbi Yitzchak, son of Maran (as the first day of Zion) asked: You are encouraging us to get married early, at the age of twenty, so when did you find out?
Maran answered him: “They didn’t want to marry me”… At that time, whoever was studying Torah, the girls didn’t want to marry him. There was great poverty, and they wanted someone who could provide for the house. Rebbitzin Margalit was wise enough to understand that the Torah is better than silver and gold…
After the wedding, Maran sat as a Dayan in the courthouse, together with his rabbi, the genius Rabbi Ezra Atia Zalha and Rabbi Yehuda Shako Zalha.
When the holiday of sukkah arrived, Maran set up a sukkah on the roof of the house where he was living (which was not permitted by the Jews there), and moved his heart in the sukkah. The Egyptian authorities suspected Maran of erecting the sukkah as a signal to the planes of the “Israeli enemy” where to bomb.
Police arrived at Maran’s house and demanded to know where he hides his weapon. Maran took them to the study room, pointed to the books, and said: “This is my weapon!”. The police searched behind the books and hoped to find some kind of weapon, but of course, they found nothing. Maran explained to them that the Torah is the weapon of the Jewish people, and it saves them from all evil.
After a long time of ups and downs, the ship arrived in the land of Israel.
In 1968, he became the chief rabbi of the city of Tel Aviv, as well as the head of the patriarchs of the synagogues.
Rishon L’Tzion and Chief Rabbi of Israel
He will be able to save the rabbinical institution, as long as Berra agreed to compete, and indeed he was chosen in the end for this noble position. He ended his term at the end of ten years after a law was passed against him in Congress that he could not run again.
After that, he became “Chairman of the Council of Sages of the Torah”.
Three weeks before his death, after many efforts in which he invested the rest of his strength, he had the privilege of crowning his son, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, as the first to Zion.
בְּתִשְׁרֵי תשע”ד הֻכְבַּד חָלְיוֹ שֶׁל מָרָן, וּבְחֹל הַמּוֹעֵד סֻכּוֹת חָלָה הַחְמָרָה שֶׁל מַמָּשׁ בְּמַצָּבוֹ, רַבִּים מִמַּעַמְדֵי “שִׂמְחַת בֵּית הַשּׁוֹאֵבָה” שֶׁנֶּעֶרְכוּ בְּאוֹתוֹ הַזְּמַן בְּרַחֲבֵי הָאָרֶץ – הֻפְסְקוּ, וְנֶהֶפְכוּ לְעַצְרוֹת תְּפִלָּה וּזְעָקָה לִרְפוּאָתוֹ הַשְּׁלֵמָה, וְאַף הוֹסִיפוּ לִשְׁמוֹ אֶת הַשֵּׁם “חַיִּים” כִּסְגֻלָּה לִרְפוּאָה
Alas for the heartbreak, on Monday the 3rd of Mar Cheshvon 1774, at noon, the Israelites killed the afflicted, and Maran was released to his worldly home, while the entire house of Israel mourned.
His funeral was one of the largest in Jewish history, and according to some estimates as many as a million people attended it, and millions more followed in a live cable broadcast.
Many days after the death, multitudes of Jews around the world walked the streets as mourners, and to this day feel orphaned by the passing of their great-father…
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