Grandson of rabbi who called homosexuals 'completely evil' to marry boyfriend

The grandson of a former chief rabbi who said that "homosexuals are completely evil” is marrying his long-term boyfriend next week.

Ovadia Cohen, named after his grandfather, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the foremost halachic authority of the 20th century for Sephardi Jews, is to marry Amichai Landsman, his partner of three years.

Mr Cohen was reportedly very close to his grandfather, growing up in his home after his parents divorced when he was young.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef died in 2013 aged 93.

“I was blessed with a wonderful family which accepted me from the very first moment, and they accepted Ovadia as well," Amichai told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"We are fully out and proud. Ovadia took a very brave step to be in a relationship with me and we are happy to get married. I am not part of the religious gay community but I think they do great work.”

Mr Cohen was previously married to a woman. The couple had two children before divorcing. He came out as gay, later meeting Mr Landsman.

The ceremony will be conducted by Zahorit Sorek, a member of the religious community who was previously married to a man and had children before divorcing and subsequently coming out and marrying a woman.

An activist for the Yesh Atid political party, she has performed a number of other marriages within the small but growing community of openly gay men and women who still define themselves as Orthodox.  

It is unlikely that many members of Mr Cohen’s family will attend the wedding.

Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, Rabbi Ovadia’s son and Ovadia Cohen’s uncle, has previously called for religious Jews to keep their children from secular or merely traditionally Jewish members of their family, because they may be a negative influence.

Last year, Rabbi Joseph Dweck, a London-based rabbi who is married to a granddaughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, was heavily criticised after he described aspects of the feminist revolution and greater social acceptance of homosexuality as a “fantastic development for humanity”.

He went on to say that while the Torah prohibited sex between two men, it did not prohibit homosexual feelings.

Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef subsequently released a statement referring to Rabbi Dweck’s words as “empty and heretical”.

In 2012, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef issued a halachic ruling forbidding people from having private lessons with gay teachers, writing: “If the teacher lives a perverted lifestyle, what is vernacularly called a homosexual, one must be very careful when studying with such a person."