Sephardic chief rabbi lauds ‘miracle’ of Ran Gvili’s body returning ‘intact’ from Gaza

Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef eulogizes Ran Gvili, comparing his battle and that of the Israeli nation on October 7, 2023, to that of Jewish rebel leader Simon Bar Kochba, who initiated a rebellion against the Roman Empire in the second century.

Referring to a legend that tells of the bodies of Jewish people not rotting during the Bar Kochba revolt, despite the Romans preventing them from being buried, Yosef says a similar “miracle” occurred on Monday, when Ran “returned intact, whole of body.”

The chief rabbi speaks about the antisemitism sweeping the world.

“God loves us, but the other nations, not so much,” says Yosef. “We’re dealing with antisemitism — we who created, we who want to survive, to live, but the world blames us even though we want to defend ourselves. We have no solution to this antisemitism, but we have to fight it and have to know that they hate us because we’re Jews.”

Yosef says that Jews need to be proud of who they are, “that we’re the chosen people of God, and we’re proud of being God’s nation.”

Yosef says that what the Jewish people have undergone, on October 7 and since — including the Hanukkah massacre at Australia’s Bondi Beach — proves that the Jews are still a united nation, and “we still love one another.”

He calls upon the Israeli people to support the thousands of bereaved families and the orphans, and to “hold them up and support them.”

“You, the Gvili family, united all of Israel around you,” says Yosef.