Controversial statement from the Sephardic chief rabbi: Secular Jews are becoming stupid through non-kosher food

Daily Mirror Controversial statement from the Sephardic chief rabbi: Secular Jews are becoming stupid through non-kosher food 14 hours Sephardic Israeli Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef calls non-religious Jews deplorable and stupid. His words continue to meet with headwinds from the Israeli opposition. Ultra-Orthodox Jews inspect citrus fruits. Non-religious Jews are deplorable and stupid, in the words of Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef. The brain of a person who does not eat kosher dulls and it becomes more difficult for them to "understand things, they don't understand," Yitzchak said in his weekly sermon, according to Israeli media reports (Sunday evening). Secular Jews are jealous of strictly religious Jews and “dissatisfied with their lives,” which are focused exclusively on fulfilling worldly desires, Josef said, according to the report. He described non-religious Jews as “poor souls” and called on religious organizations to promote a strict religious Jewish lifestyle among secular Israelis. The opposition leader in the Israeli parliament, Jair Lapid (Yesh Atid), and other MPs described it as stupid that the country's secular public finances the salary of a person like Yitzhak Yosef. In his words, Joseph has changed his role from the country's chief rabbi to the "rabbi of a loud minority" who "curses from the stands millions of Jews who serve in the army, risk and sacrifice their lives, work and keep this country alive." “Wrote Lapid on social media (Sunday evening). Josef has repeatedly come under fire for controversial statements in the past. In his sermons, for example, he compared blacks to monkeys, described Jews from the reform and conservative movements as non-Jewish and called immigrants to Israel from the countries of the former Soviet Union religious enemies. The 71-year-old has been Sephardic Chief Rabbi since April 2013. Since 1911, Israel has had a chief rabbi for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. The Ashkenazis are the descendants of Western and Eastern European Jews, while the Sephardim are descendants of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. With an estimated 3.5 million members, Sephardic Jews are a minority among the approximately 15 million Jews worldwide. (KNA)