Ukip hopeful ... the bible-burning rabbi
AN ORTHODOX Jewish rabbi who is standing for Ukip in a mayoral election has apologised for burning a ‘bible’ and posting the pictures on social media.
Shneur Odze, who is standing against former Health Secretary Andy Burnham in Manchester, reacted with fury last Sunday when he found a religious tract in his synagogue which purported to be a Jewish bible.
To compound the provocation, it was put there during Passover, the holiest time of the Jewish calendar.
Mr Odze took the book – which he believes was placed there by a proselytising religious sect – out into the street and set fire to it. He then put pictures of the event on Twitter under the comment: ‘Grateful to whoever put a missionary bible amongst our synagogue’s books. Was wondering what I’d burn my Chametz [food forbidden at Passover] with.’
He has since removed the images from Twitter.
Last night Mr Odze explained that his actions were in line with Orthodox tradition because it was a Hebrew new testament purporting to be a Jewish bible, produced by ‘an extreme proselytising Christian sect of former Jews trying to convert practising Jews to a belief in Christ as the prophesied Messiah.’
Jewish teaching forbids one from ‘putting a rock in the path of a blind man’ – or fraudulently passing something off.
But as to give the book away ‘would be to compound the fraud’, and to throw it away would be to ‘disrespect what is still a religious tract’, he said his only option was to burn it.
Mr Odze said: ‘It was no more a bible than a Beano wrapped in the cover of The Mail on Sunday is a newspaper, but I accept that it was unwise to post the pictures.’ A Ukip spokesman ‘While we understand the act, it was ill-advised to put a picture of it on social media which was also provocative and likely to be misunderstood.’ Mr Odze, who faces an uphill battle to beat favourite Mr Burnham in the race to become the first Manchester mayor in next month’s election, is a confidant of both former Ukip leader Nigel Farage and his successor Paul Nuttall. The 33-year-old former Tory councillor admits he was unsure about switching to Ukip, expecting it to be the ‘BNP in blazers’, but now believes it is the only party able to challenge Labour in the North.