Education Minister Rafi Peretz compared intermarriage among US Jews to a “second Holocaust,” Axios reports.
Peretz made the comments last week during a cabinet meeting, as ministers were briefed by former US diplomat Dennis Ross on Jewish communities in the United States and worldwide, according to the news site.
The report says Peretz said Jewish assimilation around the world, and in the US in particular, was “like a second Holocaust” and that Jews “lost 6 million people” over the last 70 years because of intermarriage.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz reportedly rejected Peretz’s comments.
“First we need to stop disregarding and looking down on Jews in America that see themselves as Jews not only religiously, but even more culturally and historically,” Axios quotes Steinitz saying.
Peretz, who heads the national religious Union of Right-Wing Parties, was appointed interim education minister last month.
Education Minister Rafi Peretz arrives for the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on June 30, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
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