One of Israel’s top rabbis recently described African Americans as “monkeys” during his weekly sermon.
During the sermon, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef used a pejorative Hebrew term when speaking of a person of colour before calling them “monkeys”, accprding to the Independent news.
These words aroused great controversy. According to the Anti-Defamation Team, an anti-Semitism and anti-racism NGO based in New York, these words are racist and unacceptable.
Following criticism, his representative assured that the rabbi only quoted a passage from the Talmud, one of the basic texts of Rabbinic Judaism.
The latter had previously been the subject of bitter criticism after stating that secular women behaved like animals because they wore shameless clothes.
Yosef represents the community of Sephardic Jews in the Maghreb and the Middle East.
