John Kerry ‘Haman’ Slur Earns Rabbis Rebuke From Rabbinic Groups
Two leading American Orthodox bodies rebuked a group of Israeli rabbis who warned of divine retribution against Secretary of State John Kerry.
“While the people of Israel and Jews around the world may properly possess serious concerns about proposals Secretary Kerry is putting forth, such concerns must only be expressed with civility and on the substance of the issues, not degenerating into personal venom and threats,” said a statement posted Feb. 5 by the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union.
The two Orthodox groups were responding to a letter put out by the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel.
The committee’s letter likened Kerry to Nebuchadnezzer, the Babylonian king who destroyed the First Temple, and warns him to “immediately halt this process of destruction,” referring to his peace push, in order to “prevent heavy divine retribution, God forbid, on all those associated with you.”
A statement on the committee’s website says “dozens” of rabbis signed a letter to Kerry but names only five, affiliated with various Israeli municipalities.
“The letter of the ‘Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel’ may represent the views of its signators,” the RCA and O.U. statement said. “It does not represent ours.”
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