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Rabbi’s remarks spark outrage about slated appearance

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, a popular Sephardic rabbi in parts of the Charedi world, said in a speech filmed years ago — but not posted online until the end of December — that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is below the historically accepted number of 6 million.
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January 6, 2016

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, a popular Sephardic rabbi in parts of the Charedi world, said in a speech filmed years ago — but not posted online until the end of December — that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is below the historically accepted number of 6 million.

Way below.

In fact, Mizrachi said, “Not even 1 million Jews were murdered.”

And now, because of widespread anger regarding these comments, the Jewish Activities Center of Los Angeles (JACLA) and its founder, Aryeh Rifkin, are debating whether to cancel a previously planned event with Mizrachi for Jan. 11. 

Rifkin, a former real estate developer, said he planned to have a public event on Jan. 5 (after the Journal’s press time) at JACLA’s storefront location in Pico-Robertson to hear the opinions of those opposed to Mizrachi’s planned lecture. He said he’s also seeking the advice of rabbinic authorities.

Created several months ago and funded mostly by Rifkin, JACLA has hosted more than 100 events, mostly for young Jews. The group’s Facebook page says it’s working toward 501(c)(3) status and that it does not endorse the views of its speakers. In this case, Rifkin said he originally booked Mizrachi because of his large following. 

“I’m not really that aware of everything that he’s said or done because I’m personally not a follower of Rabbi Mizrachi,” Rifkin said. “I would never think to assume to become an investigator and check out every positive and negative thing someone has said. However, since the public has brought it to my attention at such a high level, I, in return, have taken it extremely seriously.”

If the event moves forward as planned, Mizrachi’s lecture would be about the negative effect of lashon hara (gossip and negative speech) on communities.

As for Mizrachi’s controversial statements casting doubt on the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis, it’s not the tact used by household Holocaust deniers, who reject the notion of a genocide — many in order to discredit the idea that Jews need a nation-state. Instead, Mizrachi said in the video, more than 5 million of the 6 million Jews murdered were not actually Jewish, according to Jewish law, because of high rates of intermarriage in Europe. 

“Eighty percent of the Jewish people were assimilated and intermarried, many generations before the Holocaust,” Mizrachi said in Hebrew in his taped lecture. “A lot of non-Jews were meshed in, but in truth, how many Jews were really killed? According to my humble opinion, not even a million.”

He apologized shortly after New Year’s to the “kedoshim [holy martyrs] of the Holocaust,” saying he was mistaken and “those that were not halachically Jewish were a very small, minimal number.” 

But that has done little to stem the anger directed toward Mizrachi, who is popular within a segment of the kiruv movement in the Charedi Orthodox world, and who has lectured thousands of times to religious and secular Jews, creating a massive online library of his teachings. 

According to the biography on his Facebook page, Mizrachi was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Air Force. He moved to New York in the late ’80s to pursue a career in finance, switching to the kiruv movement a few years later. He lives in the heavily Orthodox town of Monsey, N.Y. 

Mizrachi did not respond to an email requesting an interview. 

Michael Berenbaum, professor of Jewish studies and the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at American Jewish University, said Mizrachi was factually wrong and that assimilation rates in places like Poland and Hungary were very low.

“He had no idea what he was talking about,” Berenbaum said. “If a kid had made that in one of my classes I would’ve failed him.”

Since Mizrachi’s speech became public, JACLA’s Facebook page has been inundated with negative ratings by Jews upset that Rifkin hadn’t yet canceled Mizrachi’s planned lecture, bringing what Rifkin said was a five-star rating down to 2.6 stars in a matter of days. Rifkin said people who are angry at him for considering bringing Mizrachi to JACLA got his cell number and have harassed him, calling and texting constantly. 

As of Jan. 4, Rifkin — a survivor of metastatic laryngeal cancer and the founder of the digital online media company Social Dashboard — said that he’s “undecided” about what to do for the Jan. 11 event. He said he’s reviewing information that people have presented about other controversial statements Mizrachi previously made. Among those is that the non-observance of secular European Jews was a cause for the Holocaust and that Down syndrome and autism are “punishments for sins committed in a previous life.” Mizrachi also said in an August 2014 interview with The Blaze, a conservative online news and opinion outlet, that “anyone with a clear mind can see that democracy is a self-defeating, suicidal and corrosive system of governance.”

Rifkin said in an email that he believes Mizrachi’s comments regarding the Holocaust were “said in bad taste” and that he’s “deliberately avoiding harsh language” in order to make a final decision that’s fully objective.

“I do not want to be in this situation, but whatever I decide — yes or no — will affect many people, and I have to consider all information at this point,” Rifkin said. “I’m a very imperfect person and I don’t know what the right answer is.”

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