ABSTRACT
Sephardi Jews started to play an important role in Israeli politics and society later than Ashkenazi Jews, since the positions of Sephardis and Ashkenazis were not balanced in the initial period of modern Israeli history. The Israeli establishment was built predominantly on Ashkenazi Jews, which caused dissatisfaction among the Sephardis, and even triggered violent actions by them (the main activity of this sort was the movement of the Israeli ‘Black Panthers’ at the beginning of the 1970s). However, the situation was different in the religious sphere since the equal rights of both groups were maintained by the Chief Rabbinate, which contained both Ashkenazi and Sephardi rabbis and had had both a Sephardi and an Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi at its head since the time of the British Mandate. Sephardi rabbis generally played an important role for the Jews coming from Middle Eastern (especially Arab) countries. They were the guardians of their intra-ethnic pride and tradition. Younger rabbis like Ovadia Yosef and Mordechai Eliyahu thus stood side by side with the older generation of Sephardi rabbis, which included Kaduri and Baba Sali. Since the 1970s, the situation of Sephardi Jewry in Israel has slowly started to improve, and today we can – with only minor exceptions – talk about Sephardi–Ashkenazi equality. This is to be ascribed to the rabbis mentioned above, including Rabbi Eliyahu, among other factors. In contemporary politics, the fate of Sephardi Jews has been connected mainly with the Sephardi religious party, Shas. However, Eliyahu's political opinions were closer to those of other parties, chiefly the religious Zionist ones. Rabbi Eliyahu was often associated with the community of religious Jewish settlers, not excepting their radicals (Pfeffer, 2010).
