Top national religious rabbi’s disaster slur
"Everything that happens, happens in order to cleanse the world and make it better."
Chief rabbi of Tzfat Shmuel Eliyahu said in a column last Friday that the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last week, killing tens of thousands, was “divine justice”.
In the article published in popular conservative religious right-wing weekly newsletter Olam Katan, Eliyahu compared the earthquake to the drowning of the Egyptian forces in the Red Sea in the biblical story of Exodus.
“There is no doubt that those who would have seen the Egyptians drowning in the sea and who did not remember the whole event from beginning to end would have been filled with great pity for them and would have tried to save them from drowning,” Rabbi Eliyahu wrote.
“But the Israelites sang songs because they knew the Egyptians, and understood that these drowners wanted to kill some of them and to continue to enslave the rest. They sang songs because they understood that there was divine justice here intended to punish the Egyptians, who had drowned the children of the people of Israel in the Nile, so that all the wicked in the world would see and be afraid,” he said.
Turning to the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake, Rabbi Eliyahu said, “God is judging all the nations around us who wanted to invade our land several times and throw us into the sea.
“This is about Syria – which abused its Jewish residents for hundreds of years in the blood libels of Damascus and others; which invaded Israel three times in orderto kill and destroy,” he said.
“We do not know what accounts [need to be settled] with Turkey, which has defamed us in every possible arena. But if God reveals to us and tells us that he is going to judge all our enemies, we just have to look and understand what is going on around us,” Rabbi Eliyahu said.
“Everything that happens, happens in order to cleanse the world and make it better.”
Some religious rabbis came out against his comments.
Prominent rabbi Avraham Stav said gladness over the deaths of enemies should be reserved for terrorists, “not thousands of children who have done nothing to us being crushed along with their parents”.
Rabbi Yehuda Gilad wrote, “Thousands of people made in God’s image are buried beneath the ruins of their homes, elderly and infants expiring in terrible agony and we should view this as being to our benefit?”
He said such sentiments are not in line with the teachings of the Torah.
World Jewish Congress president Ron Lauder said he was “aghast and appalled” by Rabbi Eliyahu’s remarks.
Rabbi Eliyahu is the father of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, of Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party.
He has been known for controversial statements and rulings on Jewish law, including one that forbade the rental or sale of Jewish-owned property in Tzfat to Arabs. He has also criticised the Reform movement, the LGBT community, and women serving in IDF combat units.
Ben Gvir has said in the past he believes Eliyahu should be Israel’s chief rabbi.
Times of Israel
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