The Holocaust Remembrance and Education Museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has issued a statement roundly rejecting recent call by several Israeli rabbis not to sell or rent real estate to non-Jews. “Yad Vashem perceives the rabbis' statement regarding the prohibition to sell and rent homes to gentiles as a severe blow to the fundamental values of our lives as Jews and humans in a democratic state. Past experience has taught us how important, and at the same time fragile, the basic values of mutual existence and respect for others,” the statement said. “We know that the Jewish people, which experienced suffering and persecutions as well as excommunication and revocation of fundamental rights, expressed its stance on these issues in other tones than those heard today in the statement.”
Forty-seven state-employed rabbis had signed a statement which quotes the halachic stance against renting or selling a house or plot of land to a non-Jew in Israel. “In response to many people’s questions, we hereby reply that it is prohibited by the Torah to sell a house or a field in the Land of Israel to a gentile,” the letter states. The rabbis also warned of the danger of intermarriage, the potential damage to the religious beliefs of Jewish neighbors who might be influenced by non-Jews, and the damage to the value of real estate in the area.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also issued a sharp rebuke against the rabbis. In a strongly worded statement, Peres said that the rabbis were generating a moral crisis that ran counter to the essence of a Jewish and democratic state, and were thereby doing great harm to the State of Israel. The 87-year-old Israeli head of state added that he saw no contradiction between democracy and Judaism. “All people are created in the image of God,” he said, emphasizing that this was a fundamental principle in both Judaism and democracy. Jewish and non-Jewish citizens lived in Israel, he continued, and all had the same rights, including the right to be different and to practice different religions.
Prime Minister Netanyahu also condemned the rabbis’ statement, saying that “the Torah teaches us to love the stranger.” He made the comment at the start of the National Bible Contest for Adults in Jerusalem on Tuesday, saying that non-Jews were also citizens of Israel. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin told 'Haaretz' that the rabbis' statement "shames the Jewish people. If such a thing were said in relation to Jews anywhere on the globe, a hue and cry would be raised in Israel on the need to stand up against anti-Semitism. My view is unequivocal: The attorney general must determine if this is considered incitement; and the interpretation that something is permissible according to Jewish law does not stand in the way of putting people on trial for incitement."