A top Israeli rabbi has condemned a controversial ruling forbidding renting or selling property to non-Jews. That ruling has drawn wide criticism in Israel. Israel’s attorney general is weighing possible charges against the rabbis. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv – considered the top rabbinic authority for many ultra-Orthodox Jews – weighed in against those rabbis on December 9. Israel’s Channel 2 TV, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily and other media cited Elyashiv as saying the rabbis who supported the ruling should “have their pens taken away.” The ultra-Orthodox website Behadrei Haredim says Elyashiv’s opinion has prompted several rabbis who signed the edict this week to remove their signatures.
Noah Flug, chairman of the International Association of Holocaust Survivors, also said “these rabbis need to retract their statement.” Flug says he was shocked by this revelation. “As someone who suffered as a Jew and underwent the Holocaust, I remember the German Nazis throwing Jews out of their apartments and city centers in order to create ghettos. I remember how they wrote on benches that no Jews were allowed, and of course it was prohibited to sell or rent to Jews. We thought that in our country this wouldn’t happen. This is especially difficult for someone who went through the Holocaust,” Flug was cited as saying.