One of Israel’s most senior religious leaders, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, has stoked controversy after calling black people “monkeys”

Yosef made the remarks while citing a hypothetical story about encountering a black person in the United States. He then referred to black people using the pejorative Hebrew word “kushi” and called a black person a “monkey.” Yosef, who is the most senior rabbi in one of two mainstream strands of Orthodox Judaism, was addressing a religious legal question when he made the remarks. It is not the first time the religious leader has caused controversy with his sermons. In May 2017, Yosef compared secular women to animals because they dressed immodestly. In March 2016, Yosef was forced to retract a comment that non-Jews should not live in Israel. He said that he was speaking theoretically and in practice non-Jews could live in Israel if they kept religious laws such as not committing idolatry and not eating the limbs from a live animal. He did add that non-Jews in Israel should serve Jews.