Statement by Rav Ovadia Yosef, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, upon the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin, as published by the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry

Nov 6 1997

"All know that the ways of our holy Torah are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace, and the Rabbi of Israel, Hillel the Elder, would say, "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving all people and drawing them closer to the Torah."

Now(the man who took upon himself to do so despicable and abominable an act such as this, namely the sin of shedding blood - which is one of the three most severe sins, regarding which our Sages said one should rather be killed than violate them, and they said (In Sifrei, Parashat Masa'ei) that this sin defiles the Land of Israel and makes the Divine Presence depart from it, as it states, "The land will not be atoned because of the blood which was spilled in it" - he has removed himself from Klal Yisrael (i.e., the Jewish people), and has added iniquity to his sin by attributing his act to Halachah (Jewish law), as in the well-known statement, "If you wish to be strangled, hang yourself on a tall tree" (i.e., a person who justifies his actions by attributing them falsely to Jewish law).

There is no doubt that the man is included in the category of one who proclaims an incorrect Torah view, of whom our Sages said, that even if he has Torah and good deeds [to his credit], he has no place in the World to Come. And this is all the more so for a man who spilled innocent blood deliberately, according to his own evaluation and who perverted the Halachah, whose sin is too great to be borne, and is worthy of denigration ("ginui") by all.

Now, our Halachah very much detests one who sheds the innocent blood of Israel, which is the equivalent of destroying the entire world (Maimonides, Laws of the Murderer 1:16). So too did our Sages say that whoever is guilty of shedding blood is a totally wicked person, and all the commandments and good deeds which he performed throughout his life cannot balance out this sin, and will not save him from [the Day of] Judgment (Maimonides 4:9).

Furthermore, this murderer desecrated God's name in public, causing all the just and upright Jews to become a mockery and abomination among the [other] nations, [as if to say], "See how the Jews go and kill a Jewish prime minister," and a thing such as this was never heard in all the years of our exile, such a heinous deed.

Now, at the time of the Second Temple, when the number of murderers increased because of the baseless hatred between them, it brought about an end to Jewish rule and the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews among the [other] nations. Yet the Evil Desire of baseless hatred still dances among us, and causes jealousy and hatred between brothers.

I warn the Jewish people over and over not to continue with the demonstrations and not to continue with violence, and to follow the ways of the Torah and the commandments, by which a person must live. Indeed, there were many among us, to our distress, who incited against the policy of the prime minister, using violent language, their tongues like a slaughterer's knife. Those who had been incited then rose up and shed blood, and the inciters cannot wash their hands and say, "Our hands did not spill this blood." They must confess their sins and repent fully, and must [henceforth] go in the ways of the Torah, whose ways are pleasant and whose path is peace.