Ovadia Yosef | Influential rabbi, 93

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 93, who made Israel's Shas political party a national force, died Monday.

To supporters, he was a revered sage who empowered masses of disenfranchised Sephardic Jews. Among secular Israelis, he was widely perceived as a medieval figure.

But through his control of Shas, Rabbi Yosef wielded influence over all Israelis. He left no clear successor, raising questions about Shas' future.

"We've been left orphans," the party's political leader, Aryeh Deri, wailed at a funeral ceremony Monday evening.

Rabbi Yosef, a religious scholar and spiritual leader of Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern descent, spent his lifetime transforming the downtrodden Sephardic community into a political force. The death set off a wave of public mourning.

He came to national prominence as Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi from 1972 to 1983. While revered by his followers, critics charged that he exacerbated tensions between Ashkenazi, or European Jews, and Sephardic Israelis.

He parlayed his religious authority into political power, founding Shas in the early 1980s.

It gathered just four seats in the 120-seat parliament in its first election, in 1984. At its peak, Shas won 17 seats in 1999, making it the third-largest party. Even after being hit by scandals, it remained a midsize party that delivered a string of prime ministers their parliamentary majority. Shas now has 11 seats and sits in the opposition. - AP