Sephardic Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchok Yosef called secular Jews “pitiable” and “foolish” in comments made during a weekend drasha publicized on Sunday.
“I am in the rabbinical court, receiving cases and seeing what’s happening in the secular community. [The secular community is] suffering. They don’t find fulfillment in life. Everything is done for worldly desires,” Rav Yosef said.
“It’s unbelievable, but we need to bring them closer. What some organizations are thankfully doing — bringing them closer and returning them to repentance. This is what needs to be done and this is what [my father, Rav Ovadia Yosef] did,” he added.
Rav Yosef said that “a person who eats non-kosher food, his brain gets foolish, he can’t understand things, doesn’t get it. As soon as he starts keeping kosher, you can start to influence him.”
he added that secular Jews are “jealous of [chareidi Jews], it’s all jealousy… It all comes from jealousy and becomes hatred.”
Nevertheless, Rav Yosef said he believed that most Israeli Jews love Judaism and noted that only a “tiny minority” took part in the recent protest against the gender-segregated davening gathering in Tel Aviv.
Labor MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi, called Rav Yosef’s comments “more grave than any incident that occurred on Yom Kippur.”
{Matzav.com Israel}