Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi: Don’t Look At 50-Shekel Bill Showing Intermarried Man
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A prominent haredi Orthodox Sephardic rabbi in Israel ruled that religious people should not look at the 50-shekel banknote because the poet featured on its front was married to a Christian woman.
Rabbi Benzion Mutzafi reportedly made the ruling over the weekend concerning the bill showing Shaul Tchernichovsky, a renowned Hebrew poet who was married to a non-Jewish Russian woman named Melania Karlova. The ruling was first reported on the haredi Orthodox news website Kikar Hashabbat.
The bill was unveiled in 2014.
“They say that at the time, (then-chief rabbi) Rabbi Avraham Kook begged, implored and asked him to try to convince her to convert to Judaism. And he refused,” Mutzafi reportedly said of Tchernichovsky.
The rabbi also said: “In our tradition, there are grave things written about whoever (lives) with a Christian. Tied to him like a dog. (They) are called apostates.”
Mutzafi reportedly took out a 50-shekel banknote and told one of his students that he was forbidden from looking at it. The rabbi said he keeps such banknotes folded with the portrait on the inside so he does not have to look at it.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the rabbi also gave the same ruling in the Ask the Rabbi section of his website.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
