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Poll_Blind

(23,864 posts)
Sun Apr 21, 2013, 06:31 PM Apr 2013

Ex-IDF top rabbi: Publishing discriminatory Jewish ruling was blunder

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/ex-idf-top-rabbi-publishing-discriminatory-jewish-ruling-was-blunder-1.516726

It was a "blunder" to publish the army rabbinate's ruling that giving non-Jews equal rights in the state contravenes Torah, and that mezuzahs should be put up on doors in army bases even if not all the soldiers are Jewish, said the former chief rabbi of the army in an interview with Army Radio on Wednesday.

The ruling appeared in a book distributed among Israeli soldiers, which had been endorsed by the current chief rabbi of the IDF, Brig. Gen. Rabbi Rafi Peretz.

--snip--

One ruling on Jewish law in the book, “Laws of the Mezuzah,” states: “The idea that views non-Jews as having equal rights in the state goes against the opinion of the Torah, and no representative of the state is authorized to act against the will of the Torah.”

--snip--

Israeli politicians also reacted to the Haaretz report: MK Zahava Gal-On, head of the Meretz party, called on Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to dismiss the IDF’s current chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Peretz. “According to the report," she said, "the IDF Rabbinate considers itself bound not by the laws of the State of Israel but rather by Jewish religious law. Apparently, the Torah’s view is gradually beginning to resemble racial theory.

Gal-On added that this “scandalous rabbinical ruling is no longer a problem of an audacious digression from authority but is rather an attempt to impose upon the IDF norms of humiliation and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jewish soldiers. It is the responsibility of the new defense minister not only to immediately nullify these embarrassing guidelines but also to dismiss the senior officials of the IDF Rabbinate who published them.”


Much more at the link. I'm a little surprised to see this kind of bigotry explained away by rabbis as being part of the Torah- as opposed to, say, finding defense in the Talmud.

PB
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