Background
Rabbi Hamza Bakshi-Doron was born in Jerusalem and studied in several prominent Religious Zionist yeshivot. He was appointed Chief Rabbi of Bat Yam in 1972, and later, Haifa, in 1975, a position he held until 1993, when he became Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Rabbi Hamza Bakshi-Doron has written several books and articles on religious subjects. In 2000 he and his Ashkenazi counterpart, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau made headlines in the Jewish world when they met with Pope John Paul II. While some, particularly in the haredi community, denounced the meeting as demeaning, even blasphemous, most Jews and Israelis supported the ecumenical spirit of the meetings. The meeting with the Pope was later seen as a historical precedent for a 2005 meeting of Chief Rabbis Amar and Metzger with the new Pope, Benedict XVI.
Bakshi-Doron is a widower; his wife Esther, the daughter of the former Chief Rabbi of Akko, died in 2005. The two had ten children.
Bakshi-Doron is the first Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel since Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel (1939-1954) who is not of Iraqi origin.
Read more about this topic: Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron
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