Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz reportedly said that the rate of intermarriage among U.S. Jews and non-Jewish people is akin to “a second Holocaust.”
The comments came during a July 1 cabinet meeting, which included a briefing by Dennis Ross, chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute. Three people at the meeting confirmed that Peretz, 63, made the remark, according to Axios.
Peretz, a former chief rabbi in the Israeli army, is the leader of a conservative-religious political bloc called United Right, which includes the Jewish supremacist Jewish Power party. At the meeting, which was attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ross briefed the room on a number of topics, one of which was the burgeoning rate of marriage between Jews and non-Jews in the United States.
After saying that the matter was “like a second Holocaust,” Peretz went on to add that due to intermarriages over the past 70 years, the Jewish community “lost 6 million people,” the same number of Jewish people who were killed during Adolf Hitler’s genocide.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz disagreed with the contention and said that the assimilation wasn’t a major problem.
“First, we need to stop disregarding and looking down on Jews in America that see themselves as Jews not only religiously but even more culturally and historically,” he said.
For his part, the 69-year-old Netanyahu reportedly said he is not as concerned with intermarriage as he is with U.S. Jews who are moving away from Jewish traditions.
