Avishai Ben Haim Portrays Rabbi Ovadia Yosef as an Architect of Sephardi Moderation
In a long conversation on Ben Ben Baruch’s podcast “Hamoju,” Dr. Avishai Ben Haim described Rabbi Ovadia Yosef not only as a leading halakhic decisor, but as a figure who shaped a gentler, more conciliatory Sephardi approach to Jewish life and to Israeli society. He said Rabbi Ovadia offered a model for coexistence, one rooted in easing tensions rather than deepening them.
Ben Haim’s most striking example involved a couple who had become religious. After the wife confessed to an act that, under strict Jewish law, would require divorce, Rabbi Ovadia answered in an unexpected way. He repeated to the husband, and then to the wife, “I do not believe her... go home to your children.” Ben Haim said the rabbi deliberately chose a policy of overlooking the transgression to keep the family intact, concluding the legal discussion with the words, “The halakhic conclusion, to overlook it.”
Ben Haim also said Rabbi Ovadia fought against religious stringency and favored the principle that leniency is better, warning other rabbis, “If you are strict, you will drive people away... we will lose the Jewish people.” As an example, he cited the case of someone who makes kiddush and then drives to the beach. While others would see this as a complete desecration of Shabbat, Rabbi Ovadia said the kiddush still had religious value, even if observance was imperfect, saying, “It is not nothing... it is also something.”
He also credited Rabbi Ovadia with turning the Selichot prayers at the Western Wall into a mass event, likening it to “the Woodstock of the Mizrahim.” In Ben Haim’s telling, the rabbi wanted Judaism to feel accessible to traditional and nonobservant Jews, shifting from “we will do and we will hear” to “we will do and we will rejoice.”
Ben Haim said that when Rabbi Ovadia met the King of Spain and was asked why Sephardi Jews included Yemenis, Iraqis, and Egyptians, he explained that “Sephardi” was a cultural and intellectual identity, not a geographic label. He linked that identity to Maimonides, saying all those communities were united by loyalty to “the Sephardi Maimonides” and by the “golden path” of moderation and rationalism.
