Rabbi Ovadia Yosef - Telegraph In another ruling, Yosef banned nose-picking on the Jewish Sabbath. He delivered this ruling in a sermon beamed by satellite to his followers in Israel and abroad, and his reasoning was that Jewish law forbids shaving and hair cutting on the Sabbath . Yosef explained that when a Jew picks his nose he risks pulling out the tiny hairs inside the nostrils, which is equivalent to shaving and hair cutting. Ovadia Yosef was born on September 24 1920 in Iraq, the son of Ya'acov Yosef, a renowned and popular Rabbi of the Jewish community in Baghdad . When Ovadia was four, the family emigrated to Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) and settled in Jerusalem, where he was educated at the Porat Yosef Sephardi Yeshiva, situated in the old town of Jerusalem and one of Israel's most distinguished Jewish theological institutions. Ovadia was noted for his diligence, phenomenal memory and intelligence, and at the age of 20 he was ordained rabbi. In 1945 Yosef was made a dayyan, a judge in a Jewish religious court of Sephardim in Jerusalem; in general he inclined to leniency in his rulings. Two years later he was elected head of bet din (a religious court) in Cairo and deputy Chief Rabbi of Egypt. As in Palestine, a war was raging between Jews and Arabs; and there was - in Egypt - growing hostility towards the Jews. Occasionally, Egyptian police would come to search for weapons, and Yosef would point to the books on his shelves, saying: "This is the weapon I hold." Throughout his years in Egypt, he resisted the pressure put on him by the authorities to issue proclamations against the state of Israel, and he also insisted on his right to preach in Hebrew. In 1950 he returned to Israel, where he was appointed a member of the rabbinical court of Petach Tikva. At the age of 45 he was made a member of the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Appeals in Jerusalem, Israel's highest religious authority. In 1968 Yosef became Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yaffo . Yosef's own life mirrored many of the frustrations and resentments of his Sephardic followers. Despite his reputation as a scholar, he was never accepted as a peer by the senior Ashkenazi rabbis (from Europe, Russia and America), ostensibly because he did not speak Yiddish. Some of these rabbis derided him as primitive, and many of his religious rulings (such as that trained monkeys may turn off lights or perform other chores forbidden on the Sabbath) and his issuing of warnings against demons did little to convince them otherwise. In 1972 Yosef was made Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel and President of the Supreme Rabbinical Court. He also headed the Torah ve-Hora Yeshiva, the Tel Aviv branch of the prestigious Porat Yosef Yeshiva (of Jerusalem). He set up and ran the institute for dayyanim (religious judges) in Tel Aviv. In 1973 he ruled that the Ethiopian Falashas were authentic Jews, descendants of the lost tribe of Dan. This decision, which opened the gates for Ethiopian emigration to Israel, made him even less popular among the European-descended rabbis of Israel's ultra-Orthodox community. A number of Ashkenazi rabbis and politicians passed legislation in 1983 that limited his term in office, thus stripping him of his cherished position as Chief Rabbi of Israel, which he had expected to be a lifetime appointment. Yosef did not take this lying down, attacking the Ashkenazi establishment in simple and graphic terms. In tape recordings of his speeches to students, Yosef can be heard saying of Attorney General Yosef Harish, "May his home be destroyed"; of State Comptroller Miriam Ben Porat, "That woman who is the enemy of religion"; of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, "a rodent eater"; and of Shamir's wife, "that wicked woman who would never go to a Jewish restaurant" (a reference to the Shamirs" alleged fondness for nonkosher food). In the same year Yosef resigned his position on the Supreme Rabbinical Court in order to campaign actively for the new religious political party Shas, the Hebrew acronym for the Sephardi Torah Guardians. Shas's political rallies were essentially revivalist sessions. Speakers would whip up crowds into a frenzy before Rabbi Yosef entered the auditorium. People would then rush to the stage, groping for Yosef's touch and for a chance to kiss his hand. Some would thrust hastily scrawled pleas for blessings at his aides. Yosef's actual addresses were usually soft-spoken and soothing, messages of hope and encouragement, a promise of happiness to come once Shas had taken its rightful place as a major force in Israeli political life. Shas contested the 1984 Knesset elections and won four seats, a remarkable achievement. In the 1988 elections it won six, emerging as the third largest party in the Knesset and the largest of the religious parties. It went on to play a leading role in Israeli politics. In March 1990 Rabbi Yosef allowed his protégé, the Minister of the Interior Arye Deri (who in 1999 would be sentenced to four years" jail for corruption), to bring down the government in a vote of no confidence and establish a Labour-led coalition. While the government did fall, Yosef cracked under the pressure and was forced to back down, resulting in the establishment of a Right-wing Likud government. In the June 1992 elections, Yosef gave his blessing to Shas to join Yitzhak Rabin's Labour administration, and three years later he permitted Shas to join Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition. Even though most Shas supporters favoured Netanyahu's hard-line policies, Yosef himself appeared at odds with the Prime Minister, supporting the previous government's land-for-peace policies. At the height of its success, Shas (which is now in opposition) held 17 of the Knesset's 120 seats, and Yosef had the role of political "kingmaker." Under Yosef's leadership, an entirely new religious school system, called El Ha'maayan ("back to the source"), was established. A network of child care centres and after school clubs, it provided low-cost supervision, hot lunches, free transportation and religious instruction for children. Sephardic parents in poor neighbourhoods, many not particularly observant, signed up their children to the scheme. Rabbi Yosef was an impressive figure with his thick eyebrows, silver beard and signature sunglasses, and took pride in wearing the traditional gold-braided purple robes and blue turban of the Sephardic rabbinate. A plain-spoken, charismatic leader, he had the ability to touch the emotions of the Sephardi in the street. A prolific writer, he published his first work - Yabbi'a Omer, 10 volumes of Responsa dealing with religious problems in daily life - at the age of only 18. Ovadia Yosef lived in a small, cramped apartment in which hundreds of books lined the walls and spilt across the tables and floors in precarious piles. He and his wife, Margalit Petel, had five sons and six daughters. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, born September 24 1920, died October 7 2013