Ovadia Yosef’s Blinding Bloopers

In honor of his recent call for Yeshivah students to leave Israel rather than join the IDF I thought I might compile a list of some of the rabbi’s greatest bloopers over the years:

On the secular court system:

“A Jew who goes to the courts of non-Jews in order that it should judge a case, and not to a rabbinical court, is forbidden from leading prayer services,” Yosef said. “Today this [principle] is cheapened [and] people go to the secular courts, which rule against the Torah… We see [the courts’] behavior against the Torah, against yeshiva students; they have no love for Torah, they hate the Torah,”

[Someone who] “presides in the court system of non-Jews which rule on the basis of non-Jewish law, lifts up his hands against the Torah of Moses our teacher and is called an evil person. They rule according to the laws of the nations of the world, not the Torah, and they accept the testimony of women.”

Taken from Jpost.

On the Supreme Court:

“The courts are twisted and the judges don’t believe in anything. They are apostates.”

From Jpost

On Women:

“Women should make hamin and not deal with matters of Torah,”

From Jpost

On Israeli politics:

“We have leftists, they are all angels of destruction. The rightists – they are God-fearing people, who follow the Torah,”

From Jpost

“Cursed be those for they did not come to the aid of God; Cursed be he who does not fulfill the word of this Torah to do them. I make a halaha[Jewish law] that one must vote and influence Shas.”

From Jpost

On the Israeli Arab conflict:

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this world … God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.” JPost”

“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable,”

“The Lord shall return the Arabs’ deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world,” From the BBC

On Hurricane Katrina:

“He (Bush) perpetrated the expulsion (of Jews from Gaza). Now everyone is mad at him. This is his punishment for what he did to Gush Katif, and everyone else who did as he told them, their time will come, too,” From Haaretz

On the Holocaust:

The six million “were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things which should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.” From The Independent.

On non Jews:

“Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.” From Haaretz

If you’re thinking of voting for Shas you might want to ask yourself if any of these statements would affect you.