The Times of Israel reported that Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef in Israel referred to black people as monkeys in a weekly sermon.
Yosef was speaking about the Jewish legal aspects of the blessing on seeing fruit trees blossoming during the Hebrew month of Nissan. The context was whether to bless a tree or two in the speech during Nissan.
Yosef mentioned coming across a black person with two white parents in America, which he considered an “unusual creature.” He has been seen calling black people “Kushi,” which is a pejorative term.
Known to spark controversy in his sermons, Yosef used a term meaning “monkey” to describe the black person. Yosef’s office told the outlet Ynet that the term comes from the Talmud. He has gone to court over controversial quotes before. Previous controversies arose during his sermon when he mentioned secular women who dress immodestly are behaving like animals.
In March of 2016, he retracted a statement — announcing non-Jews should not live in Israel — with a defense that the statement was “theoretical.” He general notion was that the seven Noahide Laws, which are “prohibitions against idolatry, blaspheming God, murder, forbidden sexual relations, stealing, and eating limbs off a live animal,” should be followed by non-Jews and that non-Jews in Israel are there to serve Jews alone.
There are two main or chief rabbis in Israel.
“Yosef represents those with origins in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Middle East, and David Lau represents Ashkenazic Jews, with origins in European lands of the Roman Empire,” the Times of Israel reported.
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