Jerusalem – Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz walked back his recent statement that intermarriage is “like a second Holocaust,” writing that the phrase was “probably not an appropriate term to use.”
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Jewish leaders in Israel and the United States had criticized the analogy made at a July 1 Cabinet meeting as inappropriate and offensive.
In a letter to Isaac Herzog, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Peretz wrote that the comments he made about marriage between and non-Jews did not intend to offend any Jews in the Diaspora. He wrote that he is “losing sleep” over Diaspora Jewish assimilation into a non-Jewish majority.
“Out of deep concern for the fate of the Jewish people, I used the word ‘Holocaust,’ an expression that expresses the depth of my agony about the issue but probably was not an appropriate term to use,” he wrote in the letter dated July 16. “As someone who has always championed Ahavat Yisrael — love of Israel — it is important for me to clarify that I respect and cherish the entire Jewish people, in Israel and in the Diaspora.”
Peretz has also come under fire recently for supporting gay conversion therapy and for not shaking hands with a teenage girl at an official event.
The Education Minister is not too bright.
Pity he walked it back – he was 100% correct. The first Holocaust (which certain people try to claim never happened, and still others trivialize by calling everyone they don’t like “Nazis”) destroyed Jewish bodies; this one destroys Jewish souls. Would that he had the fortitude to stick to his guns and say so.
You might not like it but is called the silent holocaust by any modern orthodox rabbi to the most Haredi. Show me a 4th generation conservative
.. Oh wait, they don’t exist.
IT SURE WAS!!!!
If the Israelis ever say something worthy, they pull back. What a joke!
Hitler tried to kill all the Jews and the intermarriage between the seculars and the non Jewish is continuing reducing our number!
if he was running for office i would vote for him