Rabbi Yehuda Benasouli, the chief rabbi of Madrid from 1978 until his retirement in 2000, died May 31 in Madrid at age 77.
The highlight of his tenure took place in 1992, when King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia came to the Beth Yaakov Synagogue in Madrid on the quincentennial of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s Alhambra Decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from Spain.
The Morocco-born Benasouli was a descendant of survivors of that expulsion. A fluent linguist, Benasouli mastered Hebrew, French, Arabic, Ladino and Hakita, and spoke some English. Yamin Benasouli, his son, lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. — jta