Shlomo Amar, the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel, has a new pen pal: The pope.
According to Ynet, the two ridiculously attired old men have been exchanging notes about "evil people" who wish to "violate" and "humiliate" Jerusalem. The villians? Not terrorists, or even UN officials, but gay men and woman who wish to gather in the city to celebrate their spiritual lives and to assert that love transcends cultural boundaries.
The mind reels. Hasn't Amar internalized the message of the season? The Temple was destroyed, our Rabbis teach, because of baseless hatred, and also because the leaders of Jerusalem asked Rome for assistance with internal affairs. The legions came, and never really left. Now Amar wants to supplement his own baseless hatred for gay people with aid and advice from another Roman, and one who belongs to such a long, and never-fully renounced, tradition of Jew-hating? And isn't it ironic that Jews, Muslims and Catholics come together so easily and so joyfully when the issue is homophobia? Let them direct that energy toward something positive, instead.
I wonder if Rabbi Amar consulted with the Pope before having a young man bound and gagged, then taken to an Arab village to be beaten, for the terrible transgression of chatting with his daughter online? I bet Benny would have okayed the kidnapping. Pius 9 is a near-saint in the Catholic church, recognized and respected by all the big cheeses. And Pius 9 was a notorious kidnapper of Jewish children.
