Talk about blaming the victims. A prominent Chabad rabbi in England triggered outrage after he wrote that that the cartoonists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo who were slaughtered by Islamist fundamentalist terrorists sinned against society.
Above: Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet
Blame The Victims: Murdered French Cartoonists “Sinned” Against Society, Chabad Rabbi Says
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Talk about blaming the victims.
A prominent Chabad rabbi in England triggered outrage after he wrote that the cartoonists at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo who were slaughtered by Islamist fundamentalist terrorists sinned against society.
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, the senior rabbi at the Mill Hill synagogue, made the remark in the Ask The Rabbi column he writes for the weekly British newspaper the Jewish News.
The cartoonists were “sinning against society,” the Canadian-born Shochet wrote, by drawing and publishing unflattering cartoons of religious figures.
“[The cartoons were] not merely insensitive but a breach of fundamental rights,” the addled Shochet wrote, adding that Judaism says “putting someone to shame is like bloodshed.”
Shochet’s remarks were meant to address “the paradox between the legality of freedom of speech and the illegality of incitement toward racial hatred.”
They drew widespread condemnation from non-Orthodox rabbis and from British Jewish communal leaders, but no public condemnation from Modern Orthodox, haredi or Chabad rabbis.