Ovadia Yosef Quotes
It is easy for a rabbi to establish prohibitions, but a rabbi's real strength is to teach Torah and rule on lawwith an emphasis on what is permitted.
The Torah consists of the first 5 books of the Old Testament. For Orthodox Jews, the Torah is central and fundamental to their belief structure. In most democracies, a statement such as this might be made by a religions fundamentalist, but is unexpected when uttered by a high government official. However, in Israel there are several small religious political parties which oftem become very powerful when the major policies are of approximate equal strength. To entice them to join their coalition, the major parties give the religious parties cabinet positions. In this particular instance, Neeman’s party in the governing coalition could cause the government to fall, So a Justice Minister of a Modern Democracy can actually repudiate the laws and supreme court whenever they are not in harmony with “the word of God” and not lose his post or even be repudiated. There is probably no other country in the world where the Minister of Justice has repudiated the law of the land and the nation’s highest court.
He was one of the few Christians who were then aware of and commented upon the new Reform Judaism—a new Americanized form of Judaism that was then developing. America and its separation of church and state had become a fertile environment for the creation and development of new religions (Mormons, Christian Scientists) and new offshoots of existing religions (Pentecostals, Reform Jews). The Reform Judaism, which many orthodox Jews do not even consider it a legitimate form of Judaism, became, in less than a century the most popular form of Judaism for American Jews.
Muslims were in the majority and there was a sizable Jewish Community in Libya. Ironically, the objection to religious law having any jurisdiction has usually been that civil rights were denied. However, the same was true (in different ways) with Fascist law.
Hadadi are the Ultra Orthodox Jews of Israel and Rauchberger. At the time the Reform Jewish Movement, the most popular branch of Judiasm in America, was not regognized in Israel where only Orthoxox Jewry is officially recognized by the Conservative government. In this case, the Israeli Jewish Refom Movement had taken the Jeruselem to Court for violating the Israeil Constitution. 9 of the public libraries in Jeruselem were segregated by gender in different hours. That meant that a mother could not take her son to one of these public school libraries and teach him to select books or particiapate in library activities or services. The Haradi did not believe in separation of church and state and in this telling quotation, the Rabbo insists that the people will do as their rabbis instruct regardless of the laws or the Constitution.
Ovadia Yosef was an Iraqi-born Talmudic scholar, a posek, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983, and a founder and long-time spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Yosef's responsa were highly regarded within Haredi circles, particularly among Mizrahi communities, among whom he was regarded as "the most important living halakhic authority".
