In an astonishingly vitriolic attack on progressive Jews, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and former national Israeli chief rabbi Shlomo Amar said that Reform Jews are worse than Holocaust deniers because, he said, they reject traditional sources of Jewish law.
The rabbi’s comments were made on the same day last week that the High Court of Justice held a hearing in which it ordered the government to reconsider its decision to suspend a resolution to create a state-recognized egalitarian prayer section at the southern end of the Western Wall.
"Today there was a hearing on the Kotel on the petition of the cursed evil people who do every iniquity in the world against the Torah, they even marry Jews and non-Jews,” said Amar, in comments first reported by the Kikar Shabbat haredi news website.
“They don’t have Yom Kippur or Shabbat but they want to pray [at the Western Wall]. But no one should think that they want to pray, they want to desecrate the holy. They are trying to deceive and say that extremist haredim invented [prayer arrangements at the Western Wall].
“It’s like Holocaust deniers, it’s the same thing. They shout, why are there Holocaust deniers in Ira, they deny more than Holocaust deniers. In all of the Mishna and Gemara [of the Talmud] there was a women’s section and a section for men in the Temple. Did we invent this?”
Amar has spoken out fiercely in the past against non-Orthodox Jews, and was one of the primary public opponents of the Western Wall agreement passed in January 2016.
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Amar, together with the Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef, publicly denounced the agreement shortly after it was approved and forced the haredi political parties, who had allowed the agreement to pass, into a corner by delegitimising the progressive Jewish denominations.
Due to the outcry, United Torah Judaism and Shas leaders felt obligated to try to halt implementation with their position as guardians of the Orthodox status-quo being undermined by Amar, the chief rabbis, and the raucous online haredi media.
Amar was also likely motivated by his rancorous feud with Shas leader Aryeh Deri, and the opportunity to undermine his position was another inducement for the Jerusalem chief rabbi to attack the deal.
