The Theopolitics of Ovadia Yosef

Haredim are often distinguished by their conservative lifestyle, dress, resistance to modern secular culture, and rejection of Zionist ideology. While the Religious Zionist theology understands the State as a vessel for Jewish revival and messianic redemption, Haredism fluctuates between total negation of modern Israel as but another "exile" and pragmatic acceptance of it. This talk will explore the theological framework of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the architect of "Sephardi" Haredism and spiritual leader of the SHAS political party. As he did not write systematic theological treatises, the focus of the talk will be on his sermons, from which Dr. Netta Schramm will reconstruct his theological reading of the political moment in late-twentieth-century Israel.