Jewish Home MK: We consult rabbis, Livni consults a sex offender
Orit Strock defends her habit of asking hardline spiritual leader's advice and accepting his rulings
MK Orit Strock of the Jewish Home party said she found it an honor to epitomize the Knesset’s rightist flank and, in comments published Wednesday, deflected criticism about her consultations with rabbis on policy issues while leveling a sharp barb at her colleague, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. The Hatnua party leader, Strock charged, “consults a sex offender.”
Admitting to the Maariv daily that the leader of her party, Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, tried to sideline her during the election campaign, Strock was unapologetic about her beliefs and about acting in the name of one of the most controversial rabbis in the country.
Those who voted Jewish Home, Strock said, knew they were voting for people who consulted with rabbis, “but the final decision is made in the faction, with all party members included.” The party, she added, “isn’t bound to rabbis on subjects [like] the state budget, general legislative bills or going to war, but is on rabbinical matters. Choosing a chief rabbi is a clear rabbinical matter.”
“There’s a large part of the national Orthodox society that is used to listening to rabbis,” Strock said in explanation of her position. “I’m the only one who said from the beginning, in a clear voice, that at all the significant turns in my public life I’d listen to the position of Rabbi Dov Lior.”
Over the years Lior has been one of the most outspoken religious leaders supporting the Jewish claim to the entire Land of Israel. Last month he was among a group of rabbis that slammed Bennett’s support for a new plan to draft the ultra-Orthodox into the IDF.
Asked whether every vote cast by her was in fact a vote by Lior, Strock said, “We consult rabbis, and Tzipi Livni consults a sexual offender.” She was alluding to the friendship between the justice minister and former minister Haim Ramon, who was convicted of sexual misconduct.
Strock, a member of the far-right Tekuma faction, was voted into the Knesset in the Jewish Home’s 10th slot after Tekuma merged with the more moderate National Religious Party to form Jewish Home.