The Times - Friday 29 June 2001
Rabbi Tells of Conversation with Messiah
From Sam Kiley in Jerusalem
ISRAEL'S ultra--Orthodox Sephardi community was engulfed in a wave of
religious optimism after Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the
Shas party, said that he had conversed with the Messiah in a dream.
Rabbi Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi, who recedntly said that
Arabs were snakes and should be annihilated, told his followers that
he had a dream on Friday.
Rabbi Ben-Zion Mutzafi, one of his followers, said that Rabbi Yosef
had told him that in his dream "at the Western Wall plaza and in all
of Jerusalem there were only Jews ... There were no non-Jewish
foreigners there. They had already been expelled [before the coming of
the Messiah]".
The Saviour was said to have exhorted Jewish children to study the
Torah, the Jewish Bible. He had told Iraqi-born Rabbi Yosef: "Anyone
who is for God should come to me, so that there will be teachers to
teach them Torah. Not one school will remain without Torah. Everyone
will study Torah."
The rabbi's party, Shas, holds 17 of the 120 seats in the Knesset and
has a wide following among the working class and the ultra-Orthodox.
Under Ehud Barak it held the balance of power in parliament and
extracted huge subsidies for its religious schools. Its former
political leader, Arieh Deri, is serving six years in jail for fraud.
These mundane dramas have done nothing to dampen enthusiasm for Rabbi
Yosef's "vision". Eliyahu Shai, the Shas chairman and Internal Affairs
Minister, said yesterday: "Every Jew who is waiting for the Messiah
sees in the dream ... significant tidings in anticipation of
salvation".
Rabbi Mutzafi said: "Until now we have not heard of anyone who saw the
Messiah in a dream. These things are evidence that salvation is nigh".
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