| Ya'akov Yosef | |
|---|---|
| Date of birth | 18 October 1946 |
| Place of birth | Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine |
| Knessets | 11 |
| Party | Shas |
Ya'akov Yosef (Hebrew: יעקב יוסף, born 18 October 1946) is an Israeli rabbi and former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Shas between 1984 and 1988.
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Yosef was born in Egypt towards the end of the Mandate era, the second son of Ovadia Yosef, a prominent rabbi.[1] He was educated in the Porat Yosef and Kol Torah yeshivas in Bayit VeGan. He was later certified as a rabbi at the Rav Kook Institute.
In the early 1980s he became a member of the new Shas party founded by his father, and represented it on Jerusalem city council between 1983 and 1984.[2] In 1984 he was elected to the Knesset on the Shas list, and sat on the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, the Education and Culture Committee and the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee for Traffic Accidents, until losing his seat in the 1988 elections. He later drifted away from his father's positions. In 2004 his father overruled one of Yosef's Halakhic rulings, which forbade soldiers from eating food provided by the army, condemning it as "inciteful."[3] He has also attacked Shas, saying in 2008 that the party had "lost its moral right to exist" and accused it of corruption and having blood on its hands.[4]
He is now the head of the Hazon Ya'akov yeshiva (which is named after his grandfather), and the rabbi for the Givat Moshe neighbourhood in Jerusalem. His brother, Avraham, is the chief rabbi of Holon.[5]
Yosef was arrested on July 3, 2011 on suspicion of incitement to racism for his endorsement of the book The King's Torah, after he failed to report to the police for questioning, and released shortly thereafter.[6] The arrest and questioning sparked protests among his supporters.[7]