{"id":104614,"date":"2016-08-29T03:06:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T11:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104614"},"modified":"2016-08-29T03:09:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T11:09:58","slug":"blacks-are-cursed-top-israeli-rabbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104614","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBlacks are Cursed\u201d\u2014Top Israeli Rabbi"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Observer<\/a>: One of Israel\u2019s most senior rabbis who sits on that country\u2019s supreme rabbinical policy-making council has announced that Africans are \u201ccursed\u201d because they have black skin.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein sits on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (the \u201cCouncil of [great] Torah Sages\u201d), which is the supreme rabbinical policy-making council of several related prestigious Haredi Jewish intranational organizations.<\/p>\n

Rabbis sitting on the Moetzes are the most prestigious rosh yeshivas (\u201cheads\u201d) of yeshivas or Hasidic Rebbes, and are regarded by other Jews as the \u201cGedolim\u201d (\u201cgreat\/est\u201d) sages of Torah Judaism.<\/p>\n

Zilberstein is the spiritual leader of several major congregations in Israel, and his opinion is frequently sought and quoted on all matters of halakha\u2014Jewish law.<\/p>\n

Zilberstein\u2019s teachings are hugely popular in Israel, and a collection of his utterances is one of the best-selling such titles in the Jews-only state.<\/p>\n

\"kikar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

His new comments appear in the Hebrew language Kikar news service, which boasts that it is the \u201cworld\u2019s leading ultra-Orthodox website.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the article, Zilberstein is asked by a Jew if his marriage can be annulled because his wife hid her racial origin from him.<\/p>\n

The questioner revealed that he had married a woman in America who looked \u201clike a westerner\u201d and claimed to be one.<\/p>\n

However, after their first child was born with slanted eyes, the Jew confronted his wife who admitted that she had actually been born in China\u2014and had had surgery to make her eyes round.<\/p>\n

The Jew\u2014an Orthodox yeshiva student\u2014now wanted to divorce his wife because he had not known she was Chinese, and had apparently thought she was Jewish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem,\u201d he was quoted in the Kikar news article as saying, is that the \u201cchildren have slanted eyes\u201d and that he had therefore made a \u201cbad bargain\u201d by marrying her.<\/p>\n

The couple had gone on to have two more children, all with slanted eyes. After the third child, the husband decided that he could no longer remain married to the woman, and that no other Jews would want to marry these children.<\/p>\n

His wife refused to agree to the divorce, and the Jew then approached the rabbinate with the request that his marriage be annulled.<\/p>\n

In his ruling, Rabbi Zilberstein said that one-third of all people in the world, the Chinese, have \u201cslanting eyes,\u201d so he cannot claim that it is a \u201cdefect.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rabbi was then asked what would be the case if the child born was black (\u201cNegro\u201d as the article called it), and the rabbi said that the law in this case would be different, \u201cbecause the Negro is cursed with the Curse of Ham\u201d and that his black skin was therefore cursed.<\/p>\n

The Curse of Ham refers to an edict issued by Noah in the Book of Genesis. One of Noah\u2019s sons, Ham, sees his father naked and drunk in his tent.<\/p>\n

Noah finds out that Ham saw him in this manner, and curses Ham, who becomes the father of the Canaanites.<\/p>\n

Even though there is no direct reference to race or skin color in the book of Genesis, the Babylonian Talmud has God curse Ham because he broke a prohibition on sex aboard the ark and \u201cwas smitten in his skin\u201d (Talmud, Sanhedrin 108b).<\/p>\n

The Midrash\u2014the collection of rabbinical literature which Jewish sages have provided over the centuries as a guide to the Talmud, states that the curse of Ham only applied to his eldest son Cush\u2014and that Cush was an African (Yalkut Shim\u2019oni. Noah Sec. 58). The use of the word \u201cCush\u201d or \u201cCushite\u201d is to the present day still a derogatory term for Africans among Jews.<\/p>\n

The association of Ham with black skin\u2014and being cursed for it\u2014is therefore a uniquely Jewish religious tradition, and although often dismissed as near fable, is still believed by vast numbers of Jews, as Rabbi Zilberstein\u2019s ruling shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Observer: One of Israel\u2019s most senior rabbis who sits on that country\u2019s supreme rabbinical policy-making council has announced that Africans are \u201ccursed\u201d because they have black skin. Rabbi Yitzchok Zilberstein sits on the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (the \u201cCouncil of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,37,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blacks","category-israel","category-rabbis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104614"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104618,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104614\/revisions\/104618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}