Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, denigrated the Reform movement after a Supreme Court decision last week recognizing the Reformation and conservative conversions carried out in Israel for citizenship purposes.
“What is conversion conversion? He’s not a Jew, ”said Yosef in a footage broadcast by the Hebrew media on Saturday.
“If a retired convert comes before me after marrying a Jewish woman, I will send her away without a divorce. She doesn’t need a divorce, the marriage is invalid, ”he said.
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Reform and conservative Jews “have nothing, no mitzvahs and nothing more,” he said.
Yosef made the comments this week in a weekly class at a synagogue in Jerusalem, according to Kikar Hashabbat, an ultra-Orthodox news website.
The bombing of the Supreme Court last week recognizes the conservative reform and conversions carried out in Israel and has generated an uproar in the ultra-Orthodox community.
The decision requires Israel to grant citizenship to those in the country who convert to Judaism under unorthodox auspices. It will have little effect on the ground, but it weakens the control of the Rabbinate, dominated by ultra-Orthodox, over conversions in the country.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders do not see the reform movement as an authentic form of Judaism and do not recognize the reform rabbis.
Attacks on reformist Jews by ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Israeli leaders are nothing new. One of the main priorities of Haredi politicians in recent decades has been to preserve the monopoly of Orthodox rabbis over official religious ceremonies in Israel and to prevent the government from recognizing the liberal Jewish denominations – Reformed and Conservative – that represent the majority of American Jews.
Yosef has a history of making provocative comments, including against reformist Judaism, women, the Supreme Court of Justice and blacks.
He called the reformist synagogues in a form of “idolatry” and said that the movement “falsified the Torah”; suggested that secular women behave like animals because of their indecent clothes; and questioned the authority of the Supreme Court in decisions related to religion, while promising to ignore its decisions.
Last year, Yosef caused public outrage after doubting the Jewish character of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In 2018, Yosef was attacked after comparing blacks to monkeys during his weekly sermon, a comment that led to calls for criminal investigation.
