Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's Funeral And the Secular Media
The massive attendance at the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef reflects the changes he brought upon Israeli society by building up the political power of Israeli Sephardi Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s enormous funeral was in many ways, especially in the way it was reflected in the media, the mirror image of the mass social protest that broke out in the summer of 2011.
At first glance, the comparison of these two events seems unfounded. But when one attempts to interpret the power of the largest funeral in the history of the state of Israel, one understands that what happened here greatly surpasses deep mourning over an important Torah scholar. It is also the protest of a Mizrahi (Oriental) public, for which the Shas Party has been its home and comfort.
While settlers and the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) ultra-Orthodox were also present at Yosef’s funeral, it was first and foremost a defining moment in the history of Israeli Mizrahi identity, even secular Mizrahi identity.
The protest of the summer of 2011 was essentially an uprising of the white tribe (Ashkenazi elite). It was not a coincidence that it crowned Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid and HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett as its natural leaders, and won a place in the consensus of the establishment media. On the other hand, the Shas-inspired Mizrahi social protest has always been seen in the same media as whiny and preposterous — a second-rank protest. That is the way Yosef himself was seen by the secular media hegemony, the short-sighted, Ashkenazi and leftist media that has failed for many years to understand his influence on the Mizrahi public.
