Maran Ovadia Yosef was born to Georgia and Yaakov on 12 Tishrei, 5681 (1920) in Baghdad, Iraq. In 1924, at the age of four, he immigrated with his family to the Land of Israel, where they settled in Jerusalem's Beit Israel neighborhood. He studied at the Bnei Zion yeshiva in the Bukharim neighborhood and, from 1933, continued at the Porat Yosef yeshiva in the Old City. Hacham Ezra Attiah, the Rosh Yeshiva, was his spiritual mentor. In 1937, when he was 18 years of age, he was sent to replace Hacham Douek at Ohel Rachel, the Persian community's synagogue in the Beit Israel neighborhood.