News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yonah Metzger voiced sharp criticism in a Saturday sermon for the court verdict allowing the sale of chametz during Pesach. In a special pre-Passover Sabbath sermon at Jerusalem's Yeshurun synagogue, Rabbi Metzger said that the decline in motivation for service in the IDF was closely linked to a decline in the State's Jewish values.

"If the court, with its own hands, crushes a sacred Jewish value like the prohibition of chametz on Pesach, it is crushing the Jewish symbol of freedom and we are to blame for the results," Metzger told the congregation.

He said that he has been meeting IDF battalion commanders who told him of the ongoing decline in performance of reserve duty among officers and other commanders. "When we tried to understand what the major reason for this was," he said, "there was agreement that the reservists' value system has eroded, and this causes a decline in motivation to carry out reserve duty."