The death of former Meretz MK and minister Yossi Sarid at 75 has produced controversy inside nationalist circles. Some eulogize him and extol his virtues, others say that this is not the time for criticism, and yet others openly express contempt for Sarid.
Bentzi Gopshtain, the leader of the Lehava anti-assimilation group, had one of the harshest reactions.
"'When the wicked are lost – rejoice!', wrote Gopshtain, quoting the Book of Proverbs. "With regard to Yossi Sarid, Rabbi [Meir] Kahane was careful not to mention his name without adding 'may his name be blotted out.' This week has begun well. Have a good week!"
Ex-MK Michael Ben Ari called Sarid, in a tweet, a "snitch" with "a mouth full of derision for the Nation of Israel and all it holds sacred, in excellent Hebrew. May his name be blotted out!"
Other, less prominent nationalists also expressed different degrees of pleasure at the passing of Sarid, who was one of the most powerful supporters of the Oslo Accords and an outspoken opponent of the nationalist and religious camps.
Some nationalists objected bitterly to these expressions of joy, however, noting that it is customary to speak well of a person who has passed away, or to say nothing at all. Among these were people who noted that Sarid spent three years teaching disadvantaged schoolchildren in war-ravaged Kiryat Shemona, and that he helped establish the Hesder Yeshiva in that northern town.
Other nationalists replied with a video in which Sarid was asked to say something positive about Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ztz"l upon the latter's passing, but said that he does not believe people should speak differently about a person when he dies than they did when he was alive. Rabbi Ovadia himself, they noted, called Sarid an evil man, mentioning him alongside the wicked Haman from the Purim story.
A giant of the Left
Asaf Gazit, a nationalist pundit whose witty pontifications are popular on Facebook, wrote that Sarid and former Shulamit Aloni, whom Sarid replaced as Meretz chairman, were both "people of a high level. Educated people, people of knowledge, rich of language, sharp and quick of tongue. They believed in hallucinations and they dreamed dreams, but they were from the top league. The passing of the Left's giants is symbolic of the Left's situation today. We are left with a bunch of inarticulate folks who find it difficult to join one logical sentence to the next. People who lack any ideological backbone, who have no direction and no path. Pathetic, like a dead body in an advanced stage of rot."
Yotam Zimri, another popular nationalist writer, cited Meretz's current chair, MK Zehava Galon, who said upon Sarid's death that in a normal country, Sarid should have been prime minister. "I just wanted to thank most of you for being a little abnormal," he quipped.
According to the Chabad.info website the secularist Sarid was in Venice, Italy, on a Shabbat about 10 years ago, and was invited into the Chabad synagogue for a Sabbath meal. Sarid said the kiddush blessing and told the gathered that it was the day after Simchat Torah as well his birthday, and that he was very happy to be there. He said that the guard at a Sephardic synagogue would not let him into the service unless he committed to stay until its end, and that he refused to have conditions placed before him.
Quite a few Facebook posts featured Youtube audio of a radio interview in which Sarid confessed that he had had an out-of-body experience that contradicted his own beliefs regarding the existence of a soul.
"We were driving in the car," he recalled, "I felt a great weakness of mind, and a great burst of heat. I felt my soul departing, and as a flying soul I looked down upon the globe and I saw my family continuing to drive in the car, because my wife drove to the hospital. And I saw my children crying. The soul left the body – and you see, I do not believe in the soul's remaining, it contradicts my ideology."