I don’t find these quotes shocking. They are basic Torah or a basic function of social identity (the more strongly you identify with your group, the more likely you are to have negative views of outsiders).<\/p>\n
(JTA<\/a>) — Israel\u2019s Sephardic chief rabbi said Saturday that non-Jews who don\u2019t accept Judaism’s basic laws for humanity should be expelled from Israel and sent to Saudi Arabia<\/a>. But Jews will hold off on doing that until the messianic age because in the meantime Israel needs non-Jews as servants.<\/p>\n \u201cWho will be the servers? Who will be our assistants?” Yitzhak Yosef said. “Therefore, we leave them here in the land.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, last year said it was unacceptable<\/a> for Israel\u2019s education minister to visit a Conservative Jewish day school.<\/p>\n \u201cTo speak deliberately with a specific community and to recognize it and its path, when this path distances Jews from the path of the Jewish people, this is forbidden,\u201d Lau said after Naftali Bennett visited a Solomon Schechter school in New York in 2015.<\/strong><\/p>\n Lau previously referred derogatorily to blacks<\/a> at the dawn of his 10-year term, exhorting Jews to spend time learning Torah instead of watching basketball games.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you care about whether the \u2018kushim\u2019 who get paid in Tel Aviv beat the kushim who get paid in Greece?\u201d Kushim is a Hebrew slur for blacks,” Lau said in July 2013. <\/strong><\/p>\n Former Israeli chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who died in 2013, said in 2005 that Hurricane Katrina was God\u2019s punishment<\/a> to the \u201cgodless\u201d people of New Orleans.<\/p>\n \u201cHundreds of thousands remained homeless. Tens of thousands have been killed. All of this because they have no God,\u201d he said<\/strong>, adding that the hurricane was God\u2019s way of punishing President George W. Bush for his support of Israel\u2019s evacuation that year of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n In 2007, Yosef stirred controversy for comments about women.<\/p>\n \u201cA woman’s knowledge is only in sewing<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cWomen should find other jobs and make chulent but not deal with matters of Torah.”<\/strong><\/p>\n In a non-verbal rabbinic controversy, former Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger is under indictment for fraud, bribery, theft, money laundering, income tax violations, breach of trust and conspiracy<\/a>. Metzger, who was arrested in 2013 as his 10-year term of chief rabbi was ending and was indicted in 2015, is suspected of accepting some $2.6 million in bribes. Israel\u2019s attorney general also has accused Metzger of attempting to silence witnesses and interfering with the investigation into his alleged crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t find these quotes shocking. They are basic Torah or a basic function of social identity (the more strongly you identify with your group, the more likely you are to have negative views of outsiders). (JTA) — Israel\u2019s Sephardic … Continue reading