Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef
© ReutersChief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef (left) meeting with Pope Francis.
En borgerrettighedsgruppe som bekæmper antisemitisme har kritiseret en Sephardi Overrabbiner i Israel efter at han efter forlydende havde stemplet sorte mennesker som "aber"." Rabbiner Yitzhak Yosef lavede kommentarerne ved en religiøs prædiken.

Yosef hævdes at have brugt de nedsættende sætninger da han talte om arikansk-amerikanere ved en undervisningstime til følgere sidste lørdag, rapporterer Ynet News. Under talen, forekom rabbineren til især at hævde at bønner kun skulle blive ydet til sorte mennesker som havde hvide forældre.


Kommentar: Denne artikel er delvis oversat til dansk af Sott.net fra: Chief rabbi in Israel gets lambasted for calling African-Americans 'monkeys'


"You go around in the streets of America, every five minutes you will see a negro. Do you bless him as an 'exceptional creature'?" Yosef is quoted as saying. "We don't say a blessing for every negro... He needs to be a negro whose father and mother are white... if you know, they had a monkey for a son, they had a son like that."

The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based civil rights organization, slammed the "racially charged" comments from the rabbi as "utterly unacceptable."

A statement issued on behalf of Rabbi Yosef said that the religious leader was referencing religious scripture when he made the remarks. "The words of the rabbi are quoted from the Babylonian Talmud in Berakhot," the statement read.


Comment: If that's true then what else exists in religious scripture - or is interpreted in such a way - as to exemplify pathology?


One of Israel's most senior religious figures, rabbi Yosef has stoked controversy in the past by stating in 2016 that non-Jewish people "are in Israel only to serve Jews." He later retracted the statement, calling it a "theoretical" musing.