200 LEADING RABBIS OPPOSE GAY SURROGACY

More than 200 rabbis from the national-religious sector – some prominent leaders of their community – published [. . .] condemnation of surrogacy and adoption for gays on Thursday

The rabbis’ letter was signed by the most prominent leaders of the hardline wing of the national-religious community, including Rabbi Dov Lior; president of the Har Hamor Yeshiva Rabbi Tzvi Tau; Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu; co-dean of the Eli pre-military academy Rabbi Yigal Levenstein; dean of the Ateret Yerushalayim Yeshiva Rabbi Shlomo Aviner; and Rabbi Ouri Cherki, an educator in the Machon Meir yeshiva.

The rabbis said they were writing in defense of Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Aryeh Stern who said earlier this week that allowing surrogacy for gay couples would cause “children to be born and enter a very strange and unnatural life, a life without a mother and father,” and that these children’s lives would become “wretched.”

Stern’s comments came against the background of the fierce opposition expressed by large sectors of the public to the new surrogacy law passed last Thursday in the Knesset, which extended access to surrogacy to include single women but not single men or gay couples.

The 200 signatories on Thursday’s letter wrote that Stern had spoken “simply about the eternal truth of our holy Torah and human normalcy, which the healthy majority of the State of Israel identifies with, and which is outraged by the provocations of the organizations of abomination, who carry out impudent marches in the cities of Israel and even arrange marches of abomination on the Fast of Av, a day of national mourning for the Temple which was destroyed in part due to illicit sexual relations and baseless hatred.”

[. . .] “the aggressive terror which accompanies the media’s brainwashing” designed to “destroy the concept of family and turn perverts into heroes will not succeed, and nor will the attempt to silence rabbis and sane people and turn them into delusional extremists.”

“Rabbi Aryeh Stern came out in defense of the children of Israel who will become wretched if they are not adopted by normative families,” they said, adding that their comments and Stern’s were designed to ensure that children are given “the basic right to live in natural, normative families and grow up to be normal and psychologically healthy.” JPost

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Photo Credit:  Municipal chief rabbi of Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (C), municipal chief rabbi of Jerusalem Rabbi Aryeh Stern (L) and Temple Institute Rabbi Yisrael Ariel (R) at a prayer rally at the Western Wall. (photo credit: JEREMY SHARON)



Source: arutzsheva