Rabbi Sez…

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party in Israel, makes the New York Post for allegedly cursing Ariel Sharon and praying that G-d strike him down, kill him, and send him to a sleep from which he won’t wake up. Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz explained that he will not investigate Yosef because wishing death upon Sharon isn’t the same thing as giving clear orders for it. Yosef attempted to quell the uproar yesterday by wishing Sharon a long life and claiming that his words had been taken out of context. “‘I said a person cannot trust himself to act unilaterally, because what is a person. One day, one can go to sleep and not wake up, heaven forbid.'” But officials close to Sharon countered that the public’s interpretation of the remark was more important than Yosef’s intended meaning, and that the comments were too incendiary for the current political climate: “‘the wrong words in the wrong atmosphere.'”