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Israeli Rabbi Sets Off a PoliticalFirestorm Over the Holocaust

By JOHN F. BURNS (NYT) 1091 wordsPublished: August 8, 2000

The 80-year-old spiritual leader of a major religious political party outraged many Israelis with asermon over the weekend in which he said the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaustdied because they were reincarnations of sinners, and he sought today to calm the storm.

In a new sermon today, the spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, offered no explicit apology forhis remarks, made in a broadcast on Saturday. But the Baghdad-bern rabbi, the pre-eminentfigure in the Shas Party, which holds a key bloc of 17 seats in Israel's l20-member Parliament,appeared to backtrack from his earlier statement.

"Six million Jews, among them one million children, were killed by the wicked Nazis," he said. "All were holy and pure and complete saints."

As printed in today's English-language editions of the newspaper Haaretz, Rabbi Yosef said this:"The six million Jews, all those poor people who were lost at the hands of those evil ones, theNazis, may their names be.blotted out - was it for nothing? No. This was all the reincarnation ofearlier souls, who sinned and caused others to sin and did all sorts offorbidden acts. Theyreturned in reincarnation in order to set these things right, and received, those poor people, allthose torments and troubles and deaths under which they were killed in the Holocaust."

Bannered in newspaper headlines and given top billing in radio and television newscasts, theybecame the principal talking point wherever Israelis gathered. Although Rabbi Yosef has been atthe center of controversy before, commentators said they could recall no occasion in thecountry's 52 years of independence when an Israeli public figure had caused such an outcry.

One of the harshest condemnations came from YosefLapid, 68, a member of Parliament and aHolocaust survivor whose father perished in a death camp. "When I hear Rabbi Yosef's words, Ifeel that my father was murdered a second time," said Mr. Lapid, who is the leader of thesecularist Shinui Party. "If an important rabbi in Israel comes and says that six million Jews whodied in the Holocaust were sinning souls, it's tantamount to his saying that Hitler was doing holywork."

Others saw the remarks as a reflection of the divisions between Ashkenazic Jews, whose familieslived in Central and Eastern Europe, and Sephardic Jews, mainly from the Middle East and NorthAfrica, whose political power has grown. Shas draws much of its support from working-classSephardim, a fact alluded to by Mr. Lapid. "It seems that Rabbi Yosefwanted to say thatAshkenazis sinned and that is why they died in the Holocaust," he said.

StilI others said they feared that the remarks could encourage anti-Semites who deny that theHolocaust occurred. Other critics saw Rabbi Yosef's remarks about Palestinians as an attempt tocomplicate the peace efforts further.

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