Rabbi Meir Mazuz
Rabbi Meir MazuzYaakov Naumi/Flash 90

Rabbi Meir Mazuz, head of Yeshivat Kisse Rahamim, was critical of Haredi families of Mizrahi origin who are ashamed of their origins and try to blur them by assimilating into Ashkenazi educational institutions.

"There are many Ashkenazim who are not used to the Sephardic text and pronunciation, so we will teach them! We do not hide under the table and say: 'I, in my sins, am a Sephardi who came from the eastern lands. What am I going to do?’ he said during his latest lesson, quoted on the Haredim 10 website.

"You’re more worthy than them all. Anyone who thinks he is not worthy has a problem. Think ‘I am worthy. I am smart.’ Someone who has a soul like this, who does not value himself, upon waking up in the morning and after ‘Modeh Ani,’ should say to himself, 'I'm a great smart man, I'm a great genius, I'm worth a lot,' and keep repeating it until he gets into his brain that he is not ‘trash,’ he is a human being.


"And then, when he is a human being, when he meets another person, he will not be afraid to talk to him, but he can tell him - I am a man like you. ‘I have understanding like you.’ Where is it written? In Job, of course.”

He said that a person of Sephardic origin who prefers Hasidic educational institutions for his children suffers from a feeling of inferiority. "When a person thinks he is nothing, and that all his children have to be put in Karlin and Stolin, and Polin ... and he thinks our study is not worthy, he has a problem, he has a problem with his brain. He needs brain treatment. Let go of this insanity.”

"If you learn and learn and learn - [be proud], do not be dirt and ashes and worms,” he said, adding, “If you do not learn and say that, it's worth nothing!"