Rabbi Yedidia Shofet, former spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Iran, died last week at age 96 in Los Angeles.
Known among Iranians of all faiths, Shofet bore the honorary title of chief rabbi and was the Iranian Jewish community’s liaison to the shah and later to Ayatollah Khomeini. Shofet was born in the Iranian city of Kashan into a lineage of 12 generations of rabbis and came to Los Angeles in late-1979. He and his son, Rabbi David Shofet, assumed the spiritual leadership of the Iranian Jewish community in Southern California, which now numbers around 35,000.
At his funeral attended by Los Angeles civic and religious dignitaries, Rabbi David Zargari of the Torat Hayim Center noted that Shofet had served a total of 70 years in the rabbinate and that “the death of this great man closes a chapter in the history of Iranian Jewry.”