Israeli Chief Rabbi: Secular Jews are ‘miserable’, eating non-kosher food makes you ‘stupid’
'The only stupidity is that the secular public is financing and paying the salary of a backward person like you,' Yisrael Beitenu party leader Avigdor Lieberman fired back.
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzhak Yosef, accused secular Jews of being “miserable” while claiming that those eating non-kosher food become “stupid.”
“A person who eats non-kosher food, his brain gets stupid, he can’t understand things, doesn’t get it. As soon as he starts keeping kosher, you can start to influence him,” he said during a sermon that was leaked on social media on Sunday and translated by Haaretz.
Rabbi Yosef said he “sees everything that is going on in the secular public, and they are miserable. They are dissatisfied with their lives. It’s all about lust… It’s incredible… You can see the permissiveness in the secular public, as well as the problems it causes.”
“They are envious of us, you know, it’s all jealousy. They see the ultra-Orthodox public, they have holidays, they have children, and we go out on holidays with them… Everything starts with jealousy, and jealousy breeds hatred,” he added.
The rabbi also commented on the current debate dividing Israel over gender segregated prayers in public, which the Supreme Court has deemed illegal.
“They have been secular for several generations, but we need to bring them closer [to God]. This is what… is being done by all kinds of different organisations that are bringing them closer. This is what needs to be done,” he said, referring to the Rosh Yehudi yeshiva, which organised gender segregated prayers in a public square in central Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur, defying the court order and enraging secular people in the city.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid lashed out at Rabbi Yosef after his remarks went viral on X (formerly Twitter), saying he “is not the chief rabbi of Israel, but the rabbi of a loud minority who curses from the podium millions of Jews who serve in the army, risk and sacrifice their lives, work and keep this country alive. He was right about one thing – they felt a little stupid tonight when they remembered that they were the ones paying his salary.”
Yisrael Beitenu party leader Avigdor Lieberman also slammed the Rabbi, saying: “The only stupidity is that the secular public is financing and paying the salary of a backward person like you.”
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