Israel has been in an uproar for several days now, after remarks made by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef at a meeting with rabbis about to be sent as emissaries to the Diaspora. While his comments were made off the record, one of the rabbis who was in attendance was so startled by them that he decided to report the remarks to the media on Jan. 7.

As was the custom with his late father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Yitzhak Yosef also addressed his audience as if he was some ultra-Orthodox Archie Bunker, speaking his mind at his family’s Sabbath table. His main message was his “discovery” of a conspiracy through which the secular establishment brought masses of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel, so that their votes would cancel out the votes of the religious community. As he said in his own rambling language, “There are many, many non-Jews here, some of them communists, hostile to religion, haters of religion. They are not Jews at all, gentiles. Then they vote for parties that incite against the ultra-Orthodox and against religion.” He added that some of these immigrants, “go to church every Sunday. They go to the monastery.”

Yosef spoke angrily about the “Grandchild Clause” of the Law of Return, which allows people, who are non-Jews according to strict Jewish law, to immigrate to Israel and gain citizenship. This amendment was added to the Law of Return in 1970 following a Supreme Court ruling, which determined that since the Law of Return does not define who is to be considered a Jew, the children of women who are not Jewish (born to a Jewish father) can also be recognized as Jews. (In contrast, traditional Jewish law determines one’s status as a Jew on the basis of matrilineal descent.) The National Religious Party reacted quickly and was able to amend the Law of Return to read that a Jew is “anyone who was born to a Jewish mother or converted,” but as a compromise with the secular parties, it also determined that the law would include the “child or grandchild of a Jew and the spouse of the child or grandchild of a Jew.” This was done so as not to tear apart intermarried families. The chief rabbi considers this compromise to be “the mother of all sin,” because it has been used to grant Israeli citizenship to people who are not Jews according to his own exacting definition.

Yosef also warned his audience not to get involved with conversions overseas, telling them that even conversions conducted by the very system he heads “are sometimes done by people who are not religious themselves, so that their conversions are not valid.” He wasn’t too complimentary of the Supreme Court either, speaking clearly and succinctly, when he said, “Who is the Supreme Court? For the most part, the Supreme Court is opposed to religion!”