EXCLUSIVE: “RAV OVADIA YOSEF WAS MOSHIACH BEN YOSEF!”
On the anniversary of Rav Ovadia Yosef’s passing, z’tl, four years’ ago, on the 3rd of Cheshvan, Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita, gave over the following awesome eulogy about Rav Yosef:
(Click HERE to hear his words for yourself, in the original Hebrew)
“Rav Ovadia Yosef was mamash Moshiach ben Yosef!”
“From the age of 7, he didn’t take his head out of his [holy] books, and he used to go over each page 100 times. Rav Ovadia used to go to the Kotel via the Damascus Gate (Shaar Shechem), and they used to fire [bullets] at him, as he held his book in his hand.
“It was said about the Zhviller (Rabbi Shlomke Zhviller, the fourth Admor of the Zhviller chassidut, who established Zhviller chassidut in Eretz Yisrael) that he was shot at when he passed through Shaar Shechem, and the bullet damaged his hat. But this didn’t deter Rav Ovadia, and he continued to go to the Kotel each day via Shaar Shechem, with his book in his hand.
“It’s not stam (for nothing) that Rav Ovadia was a [Torah] genius. He used to review every single thing 100 times over. He used to follow his learning seder (schedule) and learning everything very slowly, 100 times over. This is how he learnt everything by heart, and knew the teshuvot (halachic responses) that had been written since the world began.
“At the end, after he’d had his small stroke, this caused him to forget 300 teshuvot.”
Rav Berland continued:
“One day, when the young Rav Ovadia was taken along to help [in his parents’] store, and he was carrying crates around, Rabbi Eliezer Attia, z’tl, came and told his father that he should free the young Rav Ovadia from his responsibilities in the store, so that he’d be free learn Torah, and that he, Rav Attia, would come and help him instead.
“From that time on, he didn’t take his head out of his books. There was no such thing, that he would take his head out of his books! And that’s how he became the Gadol HaDor (lit: great one of his generation). As soon as a person takes his head out of his books, he falls into all sorts of things that are forbidden by the Torah.
“Today is the yahrtzeit of Rav Ovadia Yosef, and this is the biggest yahrtzeit of the year – it’s bigger than Yom Kippur, and everything else. Because Rav Ovadia Yosef was the Moshiach ben Yosef, literally, and I danced with him, we danced together, at Yad Eliyahu*….
“Am Yisrael was asleep for 70 years, during the Babylonian exile. The holy Ari says that the 70 years of the Babylonian exile were bigger than the exodus from Egypt, because they merited to have enormous Divine revelations there, and to see Hashem Yitborach face-to-face, and to ascend to the world that continues from the edge of the ‘yud’ in the name YKVK.
“The ikker (essence) should be [for us] to follow the example of Rav Ovadia Yosef’s simplicity and clarity, and not take our heads out of books. He was the Moshiach ben Yosef – if we would have merited it, he would have been revealed [to us].”
- Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita, and Rav Ovadia Yosef appeared at a joint event to celebrate Torah learning at the Yad Eliyahu stadium.
