Ultra-Orthodox Lawmaker Ousted For Attending Nephew’s Gay Wedding
An Israeli lawmaker from the Sephardic Orthodox Shas Party resigned from the Knesset after he was criticized for attending a gay wedding.
Lawmaker Yigal Guetta on Wednesday resigned after coming under fire from several prominent rabbis and party faithful.
At the beginning of the week he confirmed to Army Radio that he had attended his nephew’s same-sex wedding and that he required his entire family to attend.
“My entire family went to the wedding. I usually don’t tell my kids to what events they should go, but this time I told them attendance was mandatory. Beforehand, I told my kids: ‘We’re going to make him happy because he’s my sister’s son and I want him to be happy, but I want you to know that according to the Torah this [wedding] is forbidden and an abomination. I have no leeway on this,” he told Army Radio.
The wedding took place two years ago.
Several prominent haredi Orthodox rabbis called on the Shas party to fire Guetta. He refused to apologize for his attendance at the wedding and requiring his family members to attend, and resigned from the Knesset before he was asked to, Haaretz reported, citing unnamed people close to the Shas Party.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
