Yehuda Tzadka

He was succeeded as rosh yeshiva by Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul. After the latter's death in 1998, Tzadka's son, Rabbi Moshe Tzadka, was named rosh yeshiva of the Geula branch of Porat Yosef Yeshiva.

He suffered his last heart attack during the night of the Fast of Gedaliah in 1991 and was taken to hospital. Two weeks later he suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He died on 20 October 1991 (12 Cheshvan 5752) and was buried in the Sanhedria Cemetery in a family plot.

In 1984 he published the sefer Kol Yehuda (The Voice of Yehuda), a book of halakha and aggadah incorporating his approach to all matters of life.

When Attiya died in May 1970, the yeshiva directors asked Tzadka to become the new rosh yeshiva. He agreed, but when he saw a new sign on the door of his classroom: "Rabbi Yehuda Tzadka, Rosh Yeshiva", he insisted that it be taken down and refused to be called by that title.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when the Jordanian army captured the Old City, Tzadka supervised groups of Porat Yosef students learning in synagogues in the neighborhoods of Geula, Katamon, and the Bukharim Quarter. After the war, he traveled to England for four months to raise money on behalf of a new yeshiva building, which was erected in the Geula neighborhood in the mid-1950s.

In 1937 Attiya suggested Tzadka as a replacement for a senior Talmudic lecturer who was unable to continue teaching. Tzadka's first class included Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul, Rabbi Yehuda Moallem, Rabbi Baruch Ben Haim, and Rabbi Ezra Ades, all of whom would go on to leadership positions in the Sephardi Torah world. Tzadka taught in classic Sephardi style, focusing on the Talmudic commentaries of the Maharsha and the Maharam. Like Attiya, he also emphasized the study of musar (ethics) texts such as Mesillat Yesharim. He distinguished himself as a teacher by his ability to gear each lesson to the level of his students.

Tzadka married Fahima Batat, daughter of Rabbi Selim Tzalach Batat of Baghdad, in 1934. They had five sons and two daughters. Fahima died at the age of 57, after which Tzadka remarried, to Tamar Asuderi, who survived him.

Yehuda Yehoshua Tzadka (Hebrew: יהודה צדקה; 13 January 1910 – 20 October 1991) was a respected Sephardi rabbi and rosh yeshiva of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He became a student in the yeshiva after his bar mitzvah, and continued to study and teach there for almost 70 years.

Tzadka was born in Jerusalem to Shaul Tzadka, a Jewish merchant from Baghdad who had immigrated to Ottoman Palestine around 1900 with his wife, Simcha, a niece of the Ben Ish Chai. The family lived in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood, and young Yehuda attended Talmud Torah Bnei Tzion in the Bukharim Quarter. After his bar mitzvah he enrolled in Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Old City, which had opened a year earlier. Following the death of rosh yeshiva Shlomo Laniado, Tzadka became a student of the new rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Ezra Attiya, from whom he continued to learn for the next 45 years.