Yosef Azran

Yosef Azran was born in 1941 in Marrakech

Yosef Azran was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 1941. He moved to Israel in 1957.

After high school he studied at the Ponevezh Yeshiva. He received rabbinic ordination from the Harry Fischel Institute in Jerusalem. He served in the reserves in the Military Rabbinate.

He was a neighborhood rabbi in Jerusalem, ran a boarding school in Strasbourg, and directed a Torah institution in Ashdod. In 1971 he became chief rabbi of Kiryat Malakhi, and he later served as chief rabbi of Rishon LeZion. He also founded the Netivot Haim institutions in Kiryat Malakhi and Bnei Brak.

He joined Shas and entered the Knesset in 1988, serving as Deputy Speaker and, from 1990, as Deputy Minister of Finance. He was reelected in 1992. He opposed the Oslo Accords and flew to France rather than take part in the vote.

In 1996 he left Shas and led a new list, Telem Emuna, which did not pass the electoral threshold. He died in France in 2010, where he had gone for a liver transplant.