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Did mistake lead to unintended death threat
ANT KATZ
“No one has spoken to Rabbi Berland since last Shabbat, he did not relate any message whatsoever, not about Rabbi Goldstein or anything else in that matter,” said Yossi today.
“The opening sentence (of the Sunday Times and Ha’aretz stories) is a horrible lie,” Yossi told Jewish Report Online today. “The words in the website are the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Chakak. Rabbi Berland has nothing to do with it nor does he even know that it exists. Also, no one issued a death threat,” he insists. “Rav Chakak was just stating the halacha (Jewish law) and was not intending it as a death threat.”
Yossi was referring to the assertion of the Shuvu Banim in Israel and South Africa had mis-translated or misinterpreted the term “rodef” – which is counter to the responses SA Jewish Report had received from followers of Rabbi Berland earlier in the week.
RIGHT: The contentious statement regarding the “rodef”
“What was changed,” explains Yossi regarding the post on Rav Berland’s web pages, “was in the words of Rav Chakak. Instead of what he said, that the rodef should be killed, we changed it that the rodef should be stopped,” said Yossi emphatically today.
The claim that “Rabbi Berland made a death threat to Goldstein is an outright lie and it is a blood libel. Things will only get a lot worse as I am sure that the students of the Rav will immediately say that it was Goldstein who spread these lies,” said Yossi today.
While he insists that “none of (Berland’s followers) are capable of lifting a finger to another human being, they will do their best to make sure that the world knows that the war being waged against Rabbi Berland just got more serious”.
Yossi says members of the sect find it “hard to believe that (conflating Rabbis Berland and Chachak) was a mistake. It just once again proves that there is someone or some people (are) looking to cause Rabbi Berland serious harm,” he says.
“If the mistake is not fixed tomorrow, and an official apology is not made, the owner of Shuvu Banim International website, will take legal action for fabricated quotation,” he said. When asked who owned the website, Yossi did not reply. Rabbi Goldstein was not available for comment.
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