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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Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, Israel’s sephardi chief rabbi, warns that a death penalty for Palestinian terrorists would endanger Jews around the world.

By Margot Dudkevitch

Less than a week after a law calling to impose the death penalty on terrorists was approved in a preliminary reading in the Knesset, the move was harshly opposed by  Israel’s Sefardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.

Speaking at his weekly Torah class on Saturday night, Rabbi Yosef warned that such a law would endanger Jews not just in Israel, but around the world. It would also mean that Jews found guilty of perpetrating terror attacks would face the death penalty as well, which is against Jewish law.

“We are not the Sanhedrin (an assembly forming a Jewish court during biblical times). If there was a situation of a Jewish terrorist killing them, it (death penalty) would be against halacha (Jewish law). This has nothing to do with the Right and the Left, it has to do with judgment,” the rabbi said.

The rabbi, noting the defense establishment’s harsh opposition to the proposed legislation, was not the first to oppose the legislation.

“In such a matter, which can harm the State of Israel, a discussion must be held, and according to the government’s regulations, without discussion the ministers cannot support it. Even if there are coalition agreements, there is room to voice an additional opinion,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who opposed the bill, said last week during a cabinet meeting on the issue, where some 52 Knesset members voted in favor of the bill and 49 were opposed.

The law, initiated by the Israel Beitenu party with the support of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, enjoys the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described the death penalty as “justice in extreme situations.” Last Wednesday some 52 Knesset members voted in favor of the bill, with 49 opposing it.

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Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said the world must not remain silent in the face of the atrocities taking place in Syria, where a ‘small Holocaust’ is taking place.

Syria has been consumed by civil war since 2011.

Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, head of the Supreme Rabbinical Court, during an inter-religious meeting with Palestinian Muslim clerics, urged for action in the face of the immense suffering and genocide taking place in Syria over the past several years, with no end in sight.

President Reuven Rivlin hosted the event, which took place in Jerusalem on Thursday.

“A we sit here…men, women and children in nearby Syria are being murdered with chemical weapons, biological weapons and air bombs,” Yosef said. “Millions of refugees are without a roof over their heads, hundreds of thousands of others are starving under siege. They may not be our friends, but they are human beings suffering a small holocaust.”

“As Jews we must not stay silent,” the spiritual leader added, referring to the lack of global response to the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews, when “the world looked on and remained silent.”

“The call must be heard from here: A genocide will not be allowed to go by quietly — not in Syria and not anywhere else, and not against any people,” he declared.

Yesh Aid party leader Yair Lapid, who is strongly unpopular with the ultra-Orthodox community over his fight for compulsory IDF service and basic secular education in government-funded schools, nevertheless praised the rabbi’s comments.

“Though I have my disagreements with the Rishon Letzion (a nickname for rabbi), the things he said about Syria today are the words of a true spiritual leader,” Lapid tweeted.

By: World Israel News Staff
(With files from YNET)

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