Ya'akov Moshe Toledano

Ya'akov Moshe Toledano was born in 1880 in Tiberias

Toledano was born in Tiberias in 1880, the son of Rabbi Yehuda Toledano, who had come from Meknes in 1862. He studied and was ordained as a rabbi at his father's yeshiva. In Tiberias he sat on the city council and headed the Mizrachi party there.

During World War I the Ottoman authorities expelled his family to Corsica because of their French citizenship, and he served there as rabbi of the Jewish community. He returned to Tiberias in 1920. He led the purchase of land around the tombs of Maimonides and Rabbi Akiva and the founding of nearby neighborhoods.

From 1926 he served on the Chief Rabbinate in Tangier, and from 1929 he held rabbinical posts in Cairo and Alexandria. In 1942 he was elected Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, a post he held until 1958. He also collected and studied old manuscripts and found, with his brother Baruch, the Arabic original of Maimonides' commentary on the Mishnah in Damascus.

In December 1958 he became Minister of Religious Services, though he was not a member of the Knesset, and he returned to the post in the ninth government in 1959. In July 1960 he married Miriam Sebag, which drew criticism in the media. He died at his home in Jerusalem in October 1960.