Rabbis’ Wives Urge Jewish Women Not To Date Arabs
More than two dozen Israeli rabbis’ wives signed a letter urging Jewish women not to date or work with Arab men.
The letter, which had at least 27 signatories, was distributed Tuesday by Lehava, a one-year-old organization dedicated to preventing intermarriage between Jews and Arabs.
The letter comes on the heels of another letter published earlier this month and signed by several dozen municipal rabbis calling on Jews not to sell or rent properties to non-Jews. That letter created a furor, sparking a host of condemnations from some Israeli political figures and numerous religious and community leaders in the United States, including the main Modern Orthodox rabbinical group, the Rabbinical Council of America.
The rabbis’ wives’ letter said: “There are quite a few Arab workers who use Hebrew names. Yusuf becomes Yossi, Samir becomes Sami and Abed becomes Ami. They seek your proximity, try to appeal to you and give you all the attention you could ask for, they actually know how be polite and act making you believe they really care… but their behavior is only temporary,” it said. “As soon as they have in you in their grasp, in their village, under their complete control – everything becomes different. Your life will never be the same, and the attention you sought will be replaced with curses, physical abuse and humiliation.”
The letter’s signatories, according to Ynet, include: Nitzhiya Yosef, daughter-in-law of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and wife of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef; Esther Lior , the wife of Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, Shlomit Melamed, the wife of Rabbi Zalman Melamed of Beit El; and Esther Levanon, the wife of Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of Elon Moreh.
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
