Rabbis Uniting Against Violence

This weekend, rabbis throughout Israel will recall the Biblical commandment “thou shall not kill” and urge worshipers to end the violence that led to the slaying of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Shimon Shetreet, Israel’s minister of religion, said special prayers and sermons will be given in Israel’s 7,000 synagogues on the coming Sabbath, and leading rabbis were joining the campaign to halt the angry words that set the stage for the assassination.

“The theme is that we have to condemn violence. We have to condemn both those who commit violence and those who profess violence as well as those who rely on religion to guide them to commit violence,” he told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Prayers for “the soul of our beloved late prime minister” will be included, along with messages from Israel’s two chief rabbis and the rabbis of major cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa.

“We were blind to what was going on, and in my opinion it was a moral failure on the part the religious leadership and the political leadership,” Shetreet said. “We did not see that fighting words that were used in demonstrations and in newspapers could wound like bullets and knives.”