Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef visit at a school in the northern Israeli city of Tzfat, January 14, 2020. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90
The ex-Sephardic Chief Rabbi’s swift action helped unravel a concrete threat against Israel’s top legal official.
By World Israel News Staff
The former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel has played a crucial role in foiling an assassination plot against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, after promptly informing the police of a threat against her life.
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, considered one of the most influential rabbis in Israel today and who served as Sephardic Chief Rabbi from 2013 until 2024, was reportedly approached by a 36-year-old man. The man allegedly asked Yosef to issue a din rodef against Baharav-Miara.
The term din rodef originates in Halacha, or Jewish religious law, and refers to the designation of someone whose actions pose immediate danger to others.
In such cases, Jewish law permits all means — including killing — to stop that person. However, the concept has no legal standing within Israel’s civil or criminal court system.
Yosef immediately reported the conversation to Religious Affairs Ministry Director-General Yehuda Avidan, who then passed the information to Jerusalem police.
In a letter documenting the incident, Avidan wrote to Police Commissioner Daniel Levy that Yosef’s office “warned about a threat that seems concrete and could endanger the attorney general’s life,” according to Hebrew-language media reports.
Police arrested the suspect at his Jerusalem home. Officials later confirmed to Hebrew-language media that they had acted on a warning “containing an explicit threat to harm a public figure” and moved quickly to neutralize the danger.
In recent weeks, Baharav-Miara has spearheaded efforts to enforce military draft laws, including the arrest of yeshiva students who fail to report for duty.
Her push to punish those who ignore draft summons has drawn sharp criticism from Haredi political figures.
“We are getting closer to a situation of a civil war in the State of Israel between the haredim [ultra-Orthodox] and the secular Israelis,” MK Meir Porush of United Torah Judaism warned earlier in August.
“All this is inspired by the Attorney General [Gali Baharav-Miara]. This is what she is causing,” he added.
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