Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu is the Rabbi of the town of Safed, and is one of the most notoriously racist rabbis in Israel. Prosecutors twice considered indicting him for breaking the law against incitement, and twice backed down. He has publicly said he will not condemn “price tag” attacks (by settlers on Palestinians), saying “if the government won’t act, then the public should” (Hebrew). His most notorious act was signing a petition demanding no Jew rent or sell apartments to a non-Jew in his town of Safed; 300 rabbis joined the call. While the act was openly racist, and illegal, the Israel law against incitement to racism specifically excludes “religious debate” from the law; thus the case against Eliyahu was closed (Hebrew). Eliyahu’s ongoing racism, however, is likely to have cost him the 2013 election of the office of Chief Sephardic Rabbi, though he came relatively close (he got 49 votes, the winner got 68). Eliyahu, a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council, also failed to get elected in 2014 as rabbi of Jerusalem; at the time he was reputed to be the candidate of the Jewish Home (Hebrew).

An Israel blogger, Ruhama Weiss, exposed yesterday (Sunday) an old ruling (from 2002) of Eliyahu regarding the thorny issue of rape during war, the mizvah of the Comely Woman. Those who read Hebrew can read the original here. Below is a translation of Eliyahu’s reply. Be advised: the text is rather brutal and I endeavored to keep the translation as close as possible to the original.

First, several necessary notes:

1. The Comely Woman issue appears in the Bible in Deuteronomy 21. (“If you notice among the captives a comely woman and desire her, you may take her as your wife.”) However, the Talmudic sages changed the law somewhat; as can be seen in Maimonides (Hebrew) the woman is first raped in the field, and the issue of the ritualistic humiliation takes place after the war.

2. Eliyahu is lying when he says that a Comely Woman is to be released if her kidnapper dislikes her. Perusing the same Maimonides chapter, you find that she is only released if she has converted to Judaism: otherwise, “A Comely Woman who refuses to refrain from idolatry after twelve months is killed.”

3. The current Chief Rabbi of the IDF, Eyal Qarim, was exposed by me as espousing much the same views (though his writing is more elusive and much less brutal) in 2012; and this came close to torpedoing his appointment. Qarim had to recant his views before the High Court of Justice would permit his appointment. The question of whether the rape of gentile women in wartime is permitted is apparently alive and well in some circles.

On to the translation, then. Keep your barf bags handy. Rabbi Eliyahu states: