NEW SHAS GURU WON'T OFFER BLESSING TO IDF

Shalom Cohen, the new spiritual leader for Shas whom I hesitate to call a rabbi, lets his disdain for the army be known:

“Do you think that the people of Israel need an army?” Rabbi Shalom Cohen asked during a sermon. “It is God almighty who fights for Israel.”

The foremost religious arbiter in the Shas movement raised eyebrows on Wednesday when, during a special prayer held at Jerusalem’s Western Wall for IDF soldiers, he remarked that “Israel doesn’t need an army.”

The comments by Cohen, the man who succeeded the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef as spiritual leader of Shas, drew rebukes from secular Israelis, as IDF soldiers continue to operate in the Gaza Strip on the 17th day of Operation Protective Edge.

When stunned worshipers asked the rabbi to offer a blessing for IDF troops, he replied, “Do you think you are fighting? I am fighting for you. We screamed out to God: ‘Save us without inflicting anymore sorrow on the people of Israel.’” The head of Hiddush, a religious freedom lobbying group, lambasted the rabbi for the comments.

“If the country doesn’t need an army, then there’s no doubt that the yeshivot and Torah students don’t need budgets from the Treasury,” Uri Regev, the director- general of Hiddush, said. “From now on, they can put their faith in the Lord when it comes to asking for money to fund their education systems. We will help the ultra-Orthodox in saying earnest prayers for money to start growing on trees.”

“At the end of the day, most of us believe that we do need an army, but we are quite uncertain as to whether we need Shas,” Regev said.

Of course we don't need those phonies, but sadly, there's a segment of the public that thinks we do, that being the knee-jerk Haredis who'll vote for them, if anyone. Cohen has let many better people down by refusing to bless the soldiers fighting for his safety and wish them a safe return. He's a rabbi in name only.