Gazahay mocked Queen Elizabeth II as a 'vile gentile'

Shas candidate under fire for misogyny, racism won’t take Knesset seat after all

Rabbi Baruch Gazahay, who has posted many videos disparaging women and Arabs, drops candidacy amid outcry

Rabbi Baruch Gazahay in a recorded lecture posted to YouTube. (Screenshot: YouTube)

An incoming Knesset member for the ultra-Orthodox Shas party won’t enter parliament after all, since numerous videos have emerged of him making disparaging statements about women, blaming immodest clothing for breast cancer and miscarriages, and claiming women who expose their bodies are reincarnated as cows.

Rabbi Baruch Gazahay has posted hundreds of Hebrew-language YouTube videos over the last four years voicing his opinions on various subjects. He has more than 8,000 subscribers and has garnered more than 2 million views.

Gazahay was set to enter the Knesset along with a dozen others following the final approval Monday night of the so-called Norwegian Law, which lets ministers resign from parliament and be replaced by the next person on their party’s electoral slate.

But on Tuesday, amid the outcry, he withdrew his candidacy, according to Hebrew media reports.

Gazahay, 38, who was born in Ethiopia and came to Israel as an infant, heads the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Beersheba. He is married and has five children.

He became religious as an adult and shortly afterwards began delivering public lessons on morality and Jewish law.

In one such lesson in 2016, he said: “Damn the Bedouins, may God take them, they buy the girls’ hearts by saying how pretty they are. She doesn’t care who says it, even if a parrot tells her that, she will get excited.

“A woman must be modest in her clothing,” he continued. “Unfortunately, in this generation there has been a small confusion. Women think they are men. How did women end up wearing pants? I’m dying to know. You’re a woman! How do you wear pants? You’re with pants and your husband is with pants, the poor child gets confused, who’s the father and who’s the mother?”

Baruch Gazahay in a 2016 lesson. (Screenshot: YouTube)

He quoted an alleged saying by rabbis that “a woman who is used to exposing her upper body is usually reincarnated as a cow, because its udder [too] is exposed.

“A woman must be covered. That, by the way, is one of the reasons women get breast cancer. Because everyone’s eyes are upon them, and it gives them the evil eye,” he added. “It is the reason pregnant women have miscarriages. She gets pregnant and straightaway posts a photo of her belly on Facebook. Tell me, are you insane?”

In a separate clip, Gazahay said a man shouldn’t respond when a woman he doesn’t know strikes up a conversation with him. Giving the example of a supermarket cashier, he said: “You bought something? Shut up and say, ‘Miss, this is what I bought.'”

If the woman tries to speak with the man, he should tell her he will call the police, he said.

In a third video, Gazahay said a man “has to have authority in the house.” He said that when a woman is distressed over something that happened at work, her husband shouldn’t sympathize with her and “cry together with her.

“She wants a man!” Gazahay said, saying the husband should show willingness to go and assault the person who wronged her with a kitchen knife. “Do you know how happy she would be?” he said.

In another lesson, Gazahay said women who come to work in tight shirts should be paid half their salary.

Not all the controversial content has to do with men and women. In February 2020, he uploaded a video mocking those who believe the universe began with the Big Bang and those who put stock in the theory of evolution. “You need to be a monkey to think we evolved from monkeys,” he said, laughing.

On Tuesday night more remarks were published by Channel 12 news, including a video in which he said “there’s no such thing as a good-looking Arab,” and claimed that Muslim women wear head-coverings because they get beaten in the face so often.

He also mocked the queen of England as a “vile gentile.”

Shas party leader Aryeh Deri arrives at the Knesset on March 3, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Following reports about the videos, Shas leader Aryeh Deri said earlier Tuesday he had spoken to Gazahay and “made it clear that these remarks are unacceptable and do not represent the Shas movement, and Rabbi Gazahay understood this.”

According to Deri’s statement, Gazahay claimed the reported remarks were “a few sentences taken out of context from a two-hour lesson in front of his students about four years ago.”

But the growing reports on Gazahay’s many videos appeared to lead the rabbi to reconsider his political career.

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