Chief Rabbi David Lau Says Racist Jibe Was Joke
Image by getty images
Newly elected Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau dismissed on Thursday criticism of a racially-loaded comment he made earlier this week, calling it ‘a joke that lost control.’
During a meeting with ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students on Tuesday, in an attempt to dissuade them from watching basketball on television, Lau asked “why do you care whether these Kushim [a derogatory term used in Hebrew for black people] who are paid in Tel Aviv beat the kushim who are paid in Greece?” The recording was broadcast by Hakol Haharedi, a Haredi news service.
In an interview on Israel Radio Thursday, Lau addressed the anger surrounding his remark for the first time, saying Israelis “excel at taking a humorous remark and turning it into a headline.”
He added that “the one and only headline is – you are yeshiva students so study the Torah.”
For more go to Haaretz
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
