The head of London’s Sephardi community has paid tribute to the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, who died on Sunday five days after testing positive for coronavirus.

Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of the S & P Sephardi Community said his death was “a terrible loss for all of Klal Yisrael, of great a talmid hacham [Torah scholar] and Jewish leader.”

He was a “close friend of my father-in-law, Dayan Ezra Bar Shalom and a student of my grandfather in law, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

“It is particularly painful and felt among Sephardi Jewry as he was a luminary, guide and role model to so many.

“IHis passing, in a sense, further distances us from a special generateion of Torah scholars that is slowly disappearing and becoming the stuff of memory.”

Rabbi Bakshi-Doron, who was 79, served as chief rabbi from 1993 to 2003.

Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin said he was “a great Torah scholar with a deep sense of responsibility for all Israel, a rabbi, father and teacher to Jewish communities in Israel and around the world, who… brought the people of Israel closer together.”

He highlighted his efforts on behalf of agunot, women denied a Jewish divorce by their husbands.

The number of coronavirus victims in Israel has risen to 105.