Chief rabbi: Coming days are fateful, pray that leaders make the right decisions

4 October 2025, 10:39 pm

7 Edit

Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef at a menorah-lighting ceremony on the sixth night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, at the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv, December 30, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Chief Sephardic Rabbi David Yosef, at the start of a weekly homily delivered after the end of Shabbat, says the faithful “must pray that leaders make the right decisions.”

“The whole two years of the war will be decided in the coming days, and let us pray both that the hostages will return to good and peaceful lives, and also that Hamas will no longer be heard in our land,” he says, in remarks quoted by Ynet.

The final phrase is an allusion to the biblical prophecy that “the cry ‘Violence!’ will no more be heard in your land,” in which the Hebrew word for “violence” is a homophone for “Hamas.”