Early Life and Biography
Yedidia Shofet was born on 14 November 1908 in Kashan, Iran and was descended from twelve generations of Persian rabbis. Hakham Shofet was a remarkable rabbi who was reported to have known the entire Torah by heart and was a world authority on Jewish law and practice. He promoted unity and acceptance among all Jewish people.
According to Shofet's 2001 memoirs, written in Persian by Manucher Cohan, he was born in the central Iranian city of Kashan into a family with 12 generations of rabbis. Over the years, Shofet gradually gained prominence among Iran's Jews and non-Jews for his eloquent speeches and his ability to connect easily with all who approached him for help. Ultimately, he became a liaison and spokesperson for Iranian Jews before the Shah, government officials, and Islamic clerics. There's no such equivalent position for an Iranian Jewish leader in the United States.
In Iran, Shofet commanded enough respect to intervene when Jews were in dire trouble, for example, with the Iranian government. He was instrumental in persuading the Shah and other government officials in the early 1950s to allow Iraqi Jews, who had been forced to leave Iraq, to find temporary refuge in Iran before eventually immigrating to Israel, said Ebrahim Yahid, a close colleague of Shofet.
"We had many rabbis, teachers and hachamim in Iran, but he was the most open minded and most beloved of them all," Yahid said. "He was even respected by the most fanatic Islamic clerics in Iran who did not have friendships with Jews -- all because of his gentleness and humility."
Following the 1979 Iranian revolution, Shofet, along with thousands of other Iranian Jews, eventually immigrated to Southern California. While no longer working as a liaison for Iranian Jews, he continued to serve as a symbolic religious figure, urging Iranian Jewish families to preserve their Jewish tradition. In the United States, Shofet, with his son and other community leaders, helped establish the Nessah Educational & Cultural Center (Congregation Nessah Israel), first in Santa Monica and then in Beverly Hills, California.
Read more about this topic: Yedidia Shofet
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or biography:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“‘Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)