The King’s Torah is a 230-page compendium of Jewish religious law, published by the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva (Jewish religious school).
Laws in the Book
The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ applies only ‘to a Jew who kills a Jew.’
Non-Jews are ‘uncompassionate by nature’ and attacks on them ‘curb their evil inclination,’ while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since ‘it is clear that they will grow to harm us.’
Endorsement
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, declined to condemn the book, while prominent rabbis endorsed it, among them son of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba noted the book is ‘very relevant especially in this time.’
The Authors
Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the illegal West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. In 2008, Shapira was suspected of involvement in a rocket attack on a Palestinian village. In 2003, the head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, was charged for authoring a book calling Arabs a ‘cancer.’ In 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave $250,000 to the yeshiva, and in 2007 it got $28,000 from the US nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.
Major bookstores in Palestine are selling the book including a large Jewish bookstore in Jerusalem where copies are displayed with children’s books.
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